View report page

131
Year.
Metropolitan Asylums Board's Fever Hospitals.
Metropolitan Asylums Board's Small-Pox
Hospital-Ships.
Number of attendants
employed
either temporarily
or otherwise in the
course of the year.
Of whom, there contracted
Scarlet-Fever, Diptheria or
Typhoid during the year.
Number.
Proportion.
Number of attendants
employed
either temporarily
or otherwise in the
course of the year.
Of whom, there contracted
Small-Pox during the year.
Number.
Proportion.
1884 283 4 1.4 per cent.
1885 Figures not available. 240 0 0 „
1886 110 0 0 „
1887 1,103 37 3.4 per cent. 55 0 0 „
1888 Figures not available. 35 — 46 0 0 ,,
1889 42 — 53 0 0 „
1890 1,312 53 4.0 per cent. 64 0 0 „
1891 1,160 68 5.9 „ 64 0 0 „
1892 1,652 121 7.3 „ 138 2 1.4 „
1893 2,175 121 5.6 „ 320 6 1.9 „
1894 2,182 111 5.1 ,, 289 0 0 „
1895 2,514 116 4.6 „ 274 0 „
Making every allowance on the one hand for the mixed
character of the cases in the Fever Hospitals, and on the other
hand for doubts about the re-vaccination of some of the staff at
the ship-hospital, it is clear that Small-Pox stands apart from
all the other contagious diseases in relation to attacks among the
staff.
We have further evidence with regard to the postal service.
Sir Charles Dilke, speaking in June 1883, made the following
statement about those employed in that service in London:—
" In the case of persons permanently employed in the postal
service in London, averaging 10,504, who are required to undergo
vaccination on admission, unless it has been performed within
seven years, there has not been a single death from Small-Pox
between 1870 and 1880, which period included the Small-Pox
epidemic, and there have been only 10 slight cases of the disease.
In the telegraphic department where there is not so complete an
enforcement of vaccination there have been only 12 cases in a
staff averaging 1,500 men." When it is remembered how many
of the persons so employed become subject in a degree exceeding