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29
Station. It seemed to me imperative that these persons should be
waylaid and not allowed to enter London and create fresh centres
of infection. As rapidly as possible arrangements were made and
carried out for their medical inspection by which many hundreds of
hop-pickers were examined as they arrived in London. As a result
numbers 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 were waylaid at Cannon Street Station
and removed direct by the Metropolitan Asylums Board to the
small-pox ships, and in that way were not brought into Finsbury at
all.
Two further cases of small-pox appeared on September 29th :
J. P. (No. 13) aged 37 years, the father of the two children E. P. and
F. P., notified on Saturday. J. P. went to the infected hop-yard on
September 14th and returned to London September 18th. H. B.
(No. 14) aged 16 years, was the sister of Nos. 11 and 12, who were
waylaid at Cannon Street Station. She had been to the farm for a
week between September 15th and 22nd, and commenced to show
signs of small-pox on September 27th.
In the enquiries necessitated by the above we had secured a list of
about 80 persons who had been in contact with these cases and most of
whom had returned to London. Notification of those belonging to other
Boroughs were transmitted to the Medical Officers of such Boroughs,
and those returning to Finsbury were kept under observation. We
thus accounted for every case of small-pox at Bodiam, and for every
person who returned to London from the infected hop-yard. It
seemed inevitable, as I pointed out at the time, that we should get
some cases of small-pox developing in a few days, and contact
infection for some considerable time, because, although we had
isolated the persons with the disease out upon them we had not of
course been able to do the same for persons in whom the disease
was at the time only incubating. So it proved. Nos. 21 and 22
were two children who had lived in the huts and contracted the
disease there, or in the train returning to town. Nos. 17, 18 and
19 contracted the disease from E. S. directly, or indirectly from No.
3 or other infected person in 30, Thomas Street. Nos. 18 and 19
had such mild attacks that they continued to go about the district
unrecognised until I saw them on October 7th. It will be readily
understood that this amount of small-pox in a small street created