View report page

36
Table XII. shows the number of notifications from the several
diseases in each month of the years 1901 and 1902, and the accompanying
chart on p. 37 indicates the number of notifications of scarlet
fever, diphtheria, enteric fever, erysipelas, and small-pox in each week.
A number of medical men were cautioned for delaying to notify cases,
and one was summoned for so doing, and was fined £1 and £3 5s. costs.
Seventeen cases notified as small-pox, twenty-one as scarlet fever,
twenty-eight as diphtheria, and three as enteric fever, were eventually
stated not to be suffering from the disease notified, but there is an
element of doubt in connection with a number of scarlet fever and
diphtheria cases, from the mild type which these diseases may assume.
In addition, there were one case of small-pox, one of diphtheria, one of
puerperal fever, and four of enteric fever, which were not notified; the
majority of these occurred in Government buildings, and notification in
such case is not required by law.
Small-pox.
The history of the 1901-02 outbreak of small-pox, so far as Westminster
is concerned, has been given in my Annual Report for 1901 and
in my Monthly Reports. In the latter I have shown the number of
cases notified in each week in each metropolitan borough, and I have
now summarized these in tables XVI. and XVII. The rise and fall of
the epidemic in London is also shown graphically in the accompanying
chart (p. 40).
In each of the first two quarters of 1901 there were seven cases
notified in London, then, in the third quarter, it broke out severely
in St. Pancras, and to a less extent in St. Marylebone, Holborn, Hackney,
Finsbury, and Islington. In Westminster, a few cases traceable to
infection from one or other of these boroughs were notified in this
quarter, but it was not until November that a serious rise in the
number of cases occurred, and this was due to a Holborn woman,
who, while suffering from the disease, went about the neighbourhood
of Drury Lane for four days; as a direct result, a very large number of
persons were infected in the two districts; she visited nearly every publichouse
in the district, and from each one into which she had been one or
more of the inmates or customers took small-pox. Although 92 cases
were notified, we were fortunately able to prevent the disease spreading
to the rest of the City, and, eventually, to get rid of it altogether.
At the end of December a fresh invasion occurred in the north-east
part of the City, chiefly in common lodging-houses, and 29 cases were
notified; this was again overcome when, in the second week of January
a new focus of the disease was started in a large common lodging-house
in St. John's Ward. Unfortunately, the first case was sent into