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9
Four of the cases appeared to be instances of house-to-house infection,
through the intercourse of the respective families.
In the remainder no facts were brought out by the enquiries made
to enable me to classify them according to probable source of infection.
In one instance the Council took proceedings against a man who
wilfully exposed himself in the public streets after having been warned
of the illegality of so doing; he was convicted at the Tottenham Petty
Sessions and fined £1 and costs. He had been offered accommodation
in the Enfield Hospital for himself and his child, and had refused to
avail himself of it.
The greatest difficulty in dealing with a case of Scarlet Fever that
arose during the year was in reference to its occurrence in a family of
gipsies, and the facts so well illustrate the danger to a district arising
from van-dwellers, as well as the embarrassment resulting from lack of
adequate hospital accommodation, that although they were brought in
detail to the notice of the Council at the time of their occurrence, I
will here recapitulate them. A gipsy family moved into the district
from Hackney Wick, and encamped in a van and some rough tents on
waste land in the Brettenham Road; within twenty-four hours of their
arrival one of the children was taken with Scarlet Fever and was removed
to the hospital, and the encampment was broken up; four days
afterwards my attention was directed to a child in a cart outside a
public house in a main thrroughfare, and on enquiring into the matter
I found that it was another child of the same family, with the Scarlet
Fever rash well out. No accommodation could be obtained in the
hospital, nor in any house, for the child, and no alternative remained
but the encampment of the family in a field, where they remained three
days, until there was a vacancy in the hospital. A third case occurred
in the family, which was also taken to the hospital. A case occurred
in a house in the Brettenham Road, quite close to the place where the
original encampment had been, for which there was no other apparent
source of infection.
The cost, amounting to not less than £25, of the treatment of the
three gipsy cases had to be borne by the Council—a distinct hardship,
as the family not only contracted the disease elsewhere, but in all
probability never contributed directly or indirectly to the funds of the
district.
Enteric Fever.
This disease occurred only to a very limited extent. 23 cases were
notified, of which I was a secondary case in an infected house. One
notification referred to a patient who had been admitted to a hospital
in London with the disease, but no such person was known at the