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33
SMALL-POX.
Thirteen cases of small-pox were notified during the year
all of them in North Kensington, i.e., north of High-street,
Notting-hill, and Holland-park-avenue. All of the cases were
removed to hospital. There was no death from this cause,
nor had there been any in the preceding two years; the corrected
decennial average number is 1. Of the ten deaths in
the decennial period nine occurred in 1893. In London, as a
whole, nine deaths were registered, the decennial average,
corrected for increase of population, being 48. During the
preceding ten years the total deaths from this cause in the
Metropolis aggregated 444 only, the number in each year successively
being 24, 9, 9, 0, 4, 8, 41, 206, 88, and 55. The cases
of this disease notifiedwere 225 in number.
Small-pox in Kensington.—As already stated, thirteen
cases of the disease were notified during the year; four of
these cases were recorded in January. The first case was that
of a married woman whose illness began three weeks after her
confinement,she not having been out of the house since that event.
How the infection was conveyed to her remains a mystery. Her
baby subsequently fell ill of the disease, having been infected
by the mother. The other cases were a mother and an adult
son, who fell ill almost simultaneously; the common source of
infection was not discovered. In the fourth report a group of
five cases was recorded which, as illustrative of a common mode
of the spread of this highly infectious disease, is deserving of
notice. The first case was that of a tinker named Christopher
C-, aged 17, an inmate of a common lodging-house in
the Potteries district, Notting-dale, who was removed to
hospital, on the 24th March, from the West London Hospital,
at which he had applied for medical treatment. He was
stated to have been ill since the 19th March, having been
tramping about the country with a brother, both before and
after that date. During the first week in March he had spent
some time at a lodging-house at Littlehampton, the landlady
D