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10
SMALL POX.
It was generally surmised that we should have Small Pox in
an epidemic form during this year, and unfortunately the
prognostication has proved too true. When however it made
its appearance in the early part of the year, it was not confined
to our own district but occurred at about the same time
in most of the London parishes on this side the River Thames.
In this Hamlet the first case was notified to me on January 24,
and was that of a porter at a wool warehouse; he was promptly
moved to the hospital and stringent measures were taken to prevent
the spread of the disease, and no other case occurred in the
same street; the next case was that of a scrubber living in South
Grove February 10, the next March 6th a stableman in Maplin
Street, and between this and March 28th five cases occurred all
in the East Ward but these were of a sporadic character, and it
was not until March 29th that what may be termed an epidemic
broke out, in April we had thirty-one cases, May twenty-six
cases, eleven in June, sixteen in July, two in August, four in
September, one in October, two in November, and six in
December, making a total of 116 persons attacked.
The first cases of what may be termed the epidemic occurred
in a casual who had been in the Workhouse Infirmary some
little time, another inmate contracted the disease who had also
been in the Infirmary three weeks; the next was a man who
had been discharged from the Infirmary a fortnight he having
also been an inmate of the same ward as the two previous cases;
this man lived in Old Church Road and had a wife and family,
three of his children contracted the disease within a month.
On April 1st a case occurred at Freeman's Cottages, Old Church
Road, and as this patient worked at Bright & May's sweetmeat
manufactory in the same locality, I made a careful enquiry from
all the employees as to whether there was any case of sickness in
their homes, and ascertained that the daughter of the landlady
of one of them was not well but nothing more definite than this,
I visited the house and found she was and had been treated for
three weeks by a local doctor for Chicken Pox, but there is not
the slightest doubt that it was a case of Small Pox from the
first. I traced no less than sixteen cases from this source of
infection, all of which occurred in Old Church Road and Heath
Street, and which in my opinion owe their origin to this
mistaken diagnosis. The Inspectors and myself at once made a
house to house inspection of all the houses in Heath Street and
Old Church Road to ascertain their sanitary condition and
remedy the same, and also with a view of ascertaining if there
were any other cases of this disease that had not been notified
to me; we found one case, that of a young person, although
the mother denied that anyone was ill in the house she
subsequently admitted that her daughter was not well, I was
allowed to see her and at once saw that she was suffering from