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period. The part of the district which appeared to suffer most was
South-East Hackney, and it is in this locality that the scholars
of one of the London Board Schools were very much affected.
On this subject I received a letter from the Medical Officer of
the Lodon School Board on November 10th, stating that his
attention had been drawn to a prevalence of measles in connection
with the Gainsborough Road Board School, chiefly in the Infants'
Department, and from information received from the Head Mistress
of that department, it appears at that time that there were 120
children away suffering from measles, and 36 absent because of the
disease being in their homes; the Medical Officer at the same time
suggested the closure of the Infants' Department for 14 days. This
letter was the first intimation I had received that the disease was
prevalent amongst the scholars of that school, but I immediately,
with the above figures before me, coincided in the views of the
Medical Officer of the School Board in the temporary closure of the
Infants' Department of the above named school.
That department did not open again until the 29th of November—
the period of closure being 18 days. On enquiry at the School on
that date, I found 96 of the 120 children who were ill with the
disease on the closure of the School were still absent, and of the 36
absentees owing to measles in their homes, only 13 had not returned
to school. These figures indicate a beneficial influence on the
spread of the disease by temporary closure of one department.
From enquiries made of the Head Mistress of the School, I
learn that at the beginning of the above epidemic amongst her
scholars, the disease was confined to the pupils of the youngest class
in the school for nearly three weeks. Then it appeared to spread
gradually through the other classes of the School.
From this experience, it appears to me that the principle of
closure might usefully be applied to classes in the Infants' Department
at a much earlier stage of an epidemic of infectious disease.