London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London

Strand (Westminster) 1898

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Strand District, London]

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THE STRAND DISTRICT, LONDON.
15
case.mortality was 3.44 per cent. (4.30 being the average). In
the Strand District the case.mortality was 4.11 per cent., in
St. Anne's Sub.District 3.1 per cent, and in the Strand Sub.
District 7.1.

Table: TABLE XI.Scarlet Fever, Diphtheria and Membranous Croup cases and deaths in age periods. Strand District, 1898.

TABLE XI.

Scarlet Fever, Diphtheria and Membranous Croup cases and deaths in age periods. Strand District, 1898.

0.1 yrs.1.5 yrs.5.10 yrs.10.15 yrs.15.20 yrs.20.30 yrs.30.50 yrs.Total.
Scarlet Fever Cases-1916352-46
Deaths—2—————2
Diphtheriaand Membranous Croup Cases-12181421350
Deaths-22----4

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Diphtheria and Membranous Croup.—The notifications of this
disease in London were at the rate of 2.63 per 1,000 inhabitants,
as compared with 2.89 in 1897, but were above the average (2.6)
of the seven years 1891.97. The rate for this District was
2.07 per 1,000 inhabitants, having been 1.7 in 1897. The death
rate for London per 100 cases was 148; for this District, 8.00;
for the Sub.District of St. Anne, Soho, 7.14; and for the Strand
Sub.District 14.28 per cent.
Had it not been for an outbreak of this disease in a Home in
St. Anne's there would have been fewer cases to record this year
than in any recent year. There were in all forty.nine cases
notified and one case notified as scarlet fever eventually proved
to be diphtheria.
The outbreak in question occurred in an institution accommodating
sixty children varying in age from one and three.
quarters to seventeen years. Most of them slept in two large airy
dormitories, and the class.rooms occupied during the day were
also large rooms. Early in February, 1898, one of the children,
during a visit to a friend, was exposed to infection from a case of
diphtheria, and returning home the same day, developed the