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Sanitary Authorities, and other public bodies, to the President
of the Local Government Board, on April 23rd, 1881, the
primary object of the deputation being to present the resolu—
tions adopted at the Conference of Sanitary Authorities con—
vened by your Vestry, and held at the Town Hall, 23rd March,
to consider the question of the Compulsory Notification of
Infectious Disease, a measure for which London had to wait
a further period of eight years. The proceedings at the depu—
tation were fully reported in the British Medical Journal (May
7th, 1881, page 744); and in my Annual Report for 1880-81,
page 57, may be seen, not only the history of the movement
originated by your Vestry to secure Compulsory Notification,
but also the story of the circumstances which led up to my
recommendation of the removal of small-pox cases out of
London ; a recommendation which was acted upon by the
Local Government Board and the Asylums Board with such
promptitude, that within two or three weeks some hundreds
of patients were comfortably housed at the Darenth "Camp,"
and the difficulty of hospital accommodation for sufferers
from small-pox was solved, once and for ever, with the happy
result above indicated.
MEASLES.'
Measles was the cause of 120 deaths, as compared with
33, 173, and 33, in the preceding three years successively :
112 in the Town sub-district and 8 in Brompton ; the corrected
decennial average being 801. All of the deaths, save six,
occurred in the first twenty-four weeks of the year, as shown
in the table at page 26. The epidemic of 1897-98, which
commenced in this parish at the end of October, 1897, and
continued till the middle of June, 1898, a period of 40 weeks,
was accountable for 146 deaths, viz : 32 in the last sixteen
weeks of 1897, (there had been but one death from this cause
in the preceding thirty-six weeks of 1897), and 114 in the
first twenty-four weeks of 1898. Though of longer duration