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13
The first notification was received on the 4th June. I visited the case with the Doctor, and
was of the opinion that it was a severe case of Chicken-pox. As another Doctor also considered it
was Small-pox, I advised that a Consultant should be called in. He also thought it was Small-pox,
and the patient was removed to the South Wharf at Rotherhithe, but returned the same day certified
not to be suffering from Small-pox. The patient's brother, a medical student who visited him during
his illness, also contracted Chicken-pox.
The first case of Small-pox was C. S., male, 50 years of age, a rent collector of 21, Portpool
Lane, a registered tenement house. He probably contracted the disease at a working man's club
near the Holborn Town Hall.
He was taken ill on the 9th August, the rash appeared on the 11th, notified on the 13th, and
removed to hospital the same evening.
The rooms and their contents were thoroughly disinfected, the patient's wife and family were
re-vaccinated and were removed to 191, High Holborn, a vacant house the property of the Council,
some of the rooms of which were prepared and furnished for the occasion.
Only 20 of the 56 inhabitants of the house could be persuaded to be re-vaccinated.
A second case (an Italian woman) occurred in the same house (not the same family) about a
fortnight later, but was not notified until the sixth day of the rash. No other case was notified from
this house.
After the first case and prior to the second case at 21, Portpool Lane, the five successive cases
notified all occurred at a distance from this house, and in the western half of the Borough, and were
all scattered cases, and probably contracted from persons living outside the Borough.
A cause of much of the spread of the disease in the Borough was a woman of the unfortunate
class who slept at common lodging houses, and was visiting public houses in the Borough for about a
week with the eruption on her. I saw her in the street with another woman of the same class near
the Relief Offices, Endell Street, and prevailed upon her to see a doctor there. She was notified and
detained, but, unfortunately, escaped before the ambulance arrived, and was not again found and
removed to hospital until after midnight more than two days after her escape.
Delay in notification either on account of neglect in calling in a Doctor, or on account of
difficulty of diagnosis, has been another great cause of spread of the disease.
In one house, 48, Great Wild Street, a tenement house which contained 28 persons, 12 contracted
Small-pox and of these ten most probably contracted it from a youth who had not been attended by a
Doctor, and a younger brother who had the eruption out for six or seven days before a Doctor was
called in. The eleven persons had all refused re-vaccination after the first case.
These two youths also infected at least 8 or 9 relatives and friends who lived in the neighbourhood
and had visited them at this house.