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as the Act directs. All of them were, I believe, removed to
hospital, and the disease did not spread to any person in
Kensington. In the fourth period two cases occurred at
common lodging-houses in North Kensington, but happily
the disease did not spread. I had communicated with the
keepers of the several common lodging-houses in January,
calling their attention to the fact that small-pox had for some
time past been spread in London mainly through the agency
of casual wards, shelters, and common lodging-houses, and
urging them to make a careful inspection, night and morning,
of the people seeking accommodation at their respective
establishments, and to obtain medical advice in case any
lodger should develope a rash or suffer from described
symptoms of illness. The remaining cases in the parish up to
October were of no particular interest. They occurred singly
in houses. In London generally small-pox was declining,
Kensington was supposed to be free from the disease, and all
danger of an epidemic appeared to be at an end.
Small-pox at North Kensington.—The supposed
freedom of Kensington from small-pox towards the close of
1893 to which reference is made above proved delusive, for
suddenly and unexpectedly I became aware, in the latter
days of October, of an outbreak in the north-east part of the
parish—to wit, at the north end of Portobello Road, and
in adjacent streets—which had been smouldering for a month
before the first notification was received. This outbreak, which
involved a large number of cases and five deaths, was, in
many respects, a remarkable one. For its elucidation it will
be necessary to give the particulars of some of the earlier
cases, which had a common origin in a girl who, as it turned
out, had contracted the disease from (and at the residence
of) relatives in the adjoining parish of Paddington. This case
was that of :—
Maud K., aged 12, daughter of a purveyor of bread, milk, &c., who
carried on his business at No. 412, Portobello-road, and also distributed