View report page

24
It appeared that on the day of his death the widow called in two little
girls, neighbours' children, to write letters, &c. One of these children
was in due course attacked at her home a few doors off in Denbigh Terrace.
Ocoupying the parlours of Denbigh Villa were a married couple, with
whom a widowed niece was staying on a visit. This woman went
down into the rooms occupied by the family of the deeeased, and subsequently
was taken ill. Both these eases were removed to the hospital,
and both recovered. To return to the second house in Denbigh Terrace.
On the top floor of this six-roomed house there lived a married couple
and their son, a pupil teacher at a neighbouring school. On account of
the little girl's illness the latter discontinued his usual work, and about a
week after her removal he was taken ill, and was removed to the hospital,
where he did well. The occupier of this house (father of the little girl)
with his wife and four children lived in the parlour and one room in the
basement. A few days after the removal of the young man the poor
woman (wife of the occupier) was confined, and with her infant immediately
suffered from small-pox. The child died when six days old ; the
mother recovered. It was, of course, impossible to remove these last
cases to the hospital.
Some little time after these cases had been dealt with as an apparently
isolated outbreak, we heard of nine cases in two houses in
Lonsdale Road, at some distance from Denbigh Terrace. The first
of these cases appeared to be distinctly traceable to infection received
from the little letter-writer referred to above. It began in
the middle of September, and though the nine cases occurred in
three families, in two houses, and in the practice of three medical
men, we heard nothing of the outbreak till attention was called to
it by the registration of a death on the 30th October. The place
was at once visited and thereafter kept under supervision.
It was found that five children in one family in the first house had been
affected, and all recovered. In a second family three children were attacked,
and two, aged seven and nine years respectively, died. One case,
that of a married woman, occurred in the adjoining house, and she died
shortly after giving birth prematurely to a child, which survived its birth
only a few hours. This woman had not gone into the infected house, and
her illness was, presumably, the consequence of the exposure of infected
clothing in the adjoining backyard.
The next case in this group was that of a man who was on intimate
terms with one of the above mentioned families, and who is
supposed to have received the infection from the clothing of the
father of the sick children ; the father living in the same room with
them, and going about his ordinary avocations without any precautions
against the spread of the disease. This same man, or his
son, in similar circumstances, appeared to have been the originator
of a still further outbreak by which two men were stricken. One
of these men died, and his sister was infected while nursing him.
The history of the attack in the second of these men is curious.
The infecting man wishing to attend the funeral of his little sister
who had died, he said, of bronchitis (the secondary disease named
in the medical certificate of the cause of death!) borrowed his
friend's coat, that he might make a respectable appearance. Thirteen
days afterwards the lender was stricken with small-pox ! How