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21
fever. The child that had the measles was found on investigation
to be peeling, and was removed to the hospital with the others. I
have little doubt that these cases were instrumental in starting
this epidemic. In the cases from Bell Vue Road and Foster
Street, I obtained evidence of these having all associated with
one another. As was only to be expected, these cases were
merely the commencement of the outbreak, and I found it necessary
to close the British Schools and Sunday School; and the
complaint spreading to children at the National Schools,these were
closed also by order of my Council. At Christ Church one of the
boys became affected, and one after another the boys in the choir
became affected, and out of a total of fifteen boys seven were
affected with the disease. I had the cassocks and hymn books and
other music destroyed, and the Church choir stalls thoroughly
disinfected, and this appeared to check any further spread. On
July 23rd I was called to see a young boy in New Brent Street,
and found him suffering from scarlet fever. The mother made a
statement, in which she inferred that a certain family in the same
street had had it. I went to the house, and found that a child
upstairs was ill with a bad throat. I asked about the other members
of the family, and, pointing to a boy in the street, she said,
"That boy has had a bad throat." I called the boy to me, and on
examining him found him peeling freely with scarlet fever, and the
child upstairs proved to have got the disease as well. It is very hard
to have to cope with this disease when cases are permitted to run
about in this way. In this latter instance the woman was not to
blame, as a doctor was called in to the boy I discovered in the
street, and the throat was described as a sore throat, and nothing
more was said, and naturally the mother thought the other child
was suffering from the same. It is regrettable that mothers,
having the care of children, do not in many cases take proper
precautions to ascertain from a medical man what their children
are suffering from. In order to impress upon them the necessity
of doing so, I had, with the sanction of my Council, handbills
printed and delivered to all houses in the district, warning parents