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During the morning of April 30th, seven certificates were received relating to
cases at houses situate in the Hackney Road, Basing Place, Weymouth Terrace,
Harwar Street and Hows Street. Suspicion was aroused that some common cause
was connected with the occurrence of these cases. Enquiry into the circumstances
connected with the cases, made during the afternoon of the same day, elicited the fact
that six of the seven patients lived in houses supplied with milk by a vendor who
carried on business in a shop in the Hackney Road, on the Bethnal Green side. The
other patient lived in a house where the milk was received from a vendor in the
Kingsland Road. Both these vendors received the milk they sold from the same
wholesale dealer. Enquiry was made of the Public Health Department of Bethnal
Green, and it was ascertained that there had been that day an unusual number of
cases of scarlet fever in that Borough, and that the houses invaded were supplied with
milk by the vendor in the Hackney Road. Steps were then taken to stop the sale of
milk locally, and the facts connected with the outbreak were communicated to the
Medical Officer of Health of the London County Council, as it appeared probable that
in consequence of the stoppage of its sale in Shoreditch, the infected milk might be
diverted elsewhere into other sanitary districts in the Metropolis. This actually was
the case, but fortunately only to a comparatively small extent. The steps taken by
the Medical Officer of the London County Council are briefly referred to in a report of
the Public Health Committee of the County Council dated May 9th. The circumstances
of the wholesale vendor's business were investigated with results which
pointed to the infected milk coming from one of some half-a-dozen farms situate in
Derbyshire, Bucks and Staffordshire. The Medical Officers of the districts in which
the farms were situate having been communicated with, a letter was received on
the morning of- May 4th, by the Council's Medical Officer, giving information that on
one of the farms situated in Staffordshire, the milk from which had been chiefly
suspected, some cases of throat illness suggestive of scarlet fever had occurred.
Enquiries made by Dr. Hamer at the farm the same day, resulted in the provisional
diagnosis of scarlet fever being made, and this diagnosis was subsequently confirmed
by the desquamation of one of the patients. The milk from this farm was stopped on
May 4th, and, with the exception of a small quantity, which was, howe er, not
distributed in Shoreditch so far as is known, none of the infected milk was supplied
after May 3rd. The stoppage of the milk from this farm was followed at once,