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The Council has, throughout the year, continued to place at the disposal of
medical officers of health and general medical practitioners within the Administrative
County, as well as in certain of the Home Counties and extra-metropolitan
areas, the services of its expert medical staff in the diagnosis of suspected cases,
and has actively co-operated with sanitary authorities both inside and outside the
County in taking all possible preventive action. In this connection it may be
mentioned that all known contacts of cases occurring in London and persons
known to have been exposed to smallpox in the provinces or abroad and who came
to London, were kept under surveillance.
A brief account of the cases of smallpox discovered in London during 1925
is appended.
The outbreak
in Bethnal
Green.
A series of eight cases of smallpox occurred in the borough of Bethnal Green
between the 23rd April and the 22nd July, 1925.
Six of the patients were adults, whose ages ranged between 30 and 57 years,
only one of whom had been vaccinated since infancy, i.e., in the Army during the
war. There was one fatal case, a woman aged 57 years, who had not been vaccinated
since infancy. The remaining two cases were unvaccinated children aged 2 and
4 years respectively. The type of illness was stated to be of the N. African strain.
The first patient fell ill on the 16th April. He was a shipping clerk, "H.L."
aged 30 years, and was employed in the City of London. He did not consult a
doctor until two days after the onset of illness and it was not until the 20th April
that a rash appeared. Dr. J. A. H. Brincker was called in consultation to give
an opinion on the 23rd April and he pronounced the case to be one of smallpox
in a comparatively mild form. The patient had, about a fortnight before his illness,
visited a warehouse at Tilbury Docks to obtain samples of cotton and woollen rags
for his firm. The bales of rags from which the samples were taken were conveyed
from India by the S.S. " City of Naples," which left Rangoon on the 22nd January.
A member of the crew was landed from this vessel on the 2nd February, at Negapatam
suffering from smallpox, and it is possible that he was either infected in the
course of loading the bales or that he infected them after his illness developed. The
bales were dispatched from Tilbury before it was known that the shipping clerk
had contracted smallpox, but they were eventually traced and disinfected before
any distribution of the rags had taken place.
During the week-end 2nd-3rd May, four other members of the shipping clerk's
family, his wife, aged 31 (vaccinated in infancy), and three unvaccinated children,