View report page

8
of smallpox throughout London. Not alone were there
successive importations into the Metropolis by persons
tramping into London, but the unfortunate, homeless,
friendless condition of these people naturally led to difficulties
in early diagnosis and control of their movements. In one
case an unfortunate man who commonly slept at the Salvation
Army Shelter, Burne Street, passed the day in a high state
of fever on one of the seats in Regent's Park. Towards
evening he became delirious, and wandered about all night,
mostly in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden; ultimately
he found his way to the St. Marylebone Casual Ward,
and was certified to be suffering from smallpox. In
another case a woman, who habitually slept in lodging houses
and occasionally in doorways, was found to be suffering
from smallpox, but dreading the enforced isolation, escaped
from the Endell Street Infirmary before the arrival of the ambulance.
Information was received on the evening of the
following day that she had been seen in the neighbourhood
of Rathbone Place. All that night the writer, with Mr.
Gorniot and the Medical Officer of Health for the London
County Council hunted for this woman throughout various
lodging houses until daybreak without success; the day after
she was handed over to a police constable but again escaped.
Ultimately, after being four days at large in a dangerously infectious
state, she was secured and conveyed to hospital.
The amount of infection that this single case disseminated
successfully will never be known, but the following extract
from Dr. Shirley Murphy's report for 1901, throws some
light upon a few of the cases:—
"She was thus, while suffering from smallpox, a source
of considerable danger to other persons during a period of
four days and after the lapse of time corresponding with the
incubation period of smallpox, ten women, who were inmates
of common lodging houses in Parker Street. Kennedy Court,
Stanhope Street, and Whitehouse Yard were attacked. At
all these houses she was well known. At the same time
three men in a neighbouring common lodging house in Vere
Street and in Greville Street were attacked, and two men in
Harmond Street, St. Pancras, were also attacked. Following
these, and no doubt dependent on them, a series of cases
occurred in common lodging houses in Fulwoods Rents and
in Greville Street, Holborn, and a case in a common lodging
house in Queen Street, Drury Lane"—
A series of cases occurred at the Salvation Army Shelter
in Burne Street, and there is little doubt if prompt action
had not been taken the Borough would have suffered severely.