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visited was again inspected on the 1st November; and the child who was
declared on 6th October to be free from illness was found to be dead, and it then
came out that the illness had commenced on the 27th September. The death of
this child was not registered until the 8th day. On the same day four concealed
cases were discovered in the very next house to that where the death had occurred.
Another group of cases, at a house in Wheatstone Road, might
be cited in illustration of the evils attendant on keeping the sick
at home under circumstances which preclude the possibility of
isolation. In this group, as in others, it was the last person
to be attacked who succumbed to the malady. I refer to the cases,
however, for an illustration of another character :—
Wheatstone Road was a private street, and one of a group which I had brought
under the notice of the Works, &c. Committee, as requiring to be "made up."
The medical gentleman who certified the death referred it to "malignant scarlet
fever, 21 days," and appended to his certificate the following observation :
" Another death of preventable disease in this unhealthy street abounding in
decayed vegetable and animal matter soddened in filth." Now it may be freely
admitted that the state of the roadway was unsatisfactory, and, in fact, I had so
reported it; but it was scarcely reasonable to attribute the death to such a cause,
seeing that there had been a case of scarlet fever in the same house and family
some ten days before the deceased was taken ill. If the death was " preventable,'-'
it could only have been prevented by the removal of the first case to hospital—
a course that might have preserved the deceased from the malady, but this course
was objected to by the parents and by the medical attendant alike. Other cases
subsequently occurred in the same house, and the last of them was that of the
deceased child's father, a railway clerk, who fell ill and died within 7 days, leaving
a widow and six children. The certifying medical practitioner again appended a
remark to his certificate, viz., that" the roads, &c., are in a dangerous state as regards
sanitary matters," as if to imply that the fatal attack was due to the condition of
the roads rather than to the previous occurrence of four cases of scarlet fever in the
house, all under his charge, and not one of which would he allow to be removed.
As illustrations of the regardlessness of people in respect of the
spread of infection, two cases may be mentioned.
In the first oase, a child lay ill in bed of scarlet fever, and in the same room,
when the Inspector called, there were no fewer than four adults besides the
mother, viz., the child's grandmother, two other women, and a soldier. In
the second case, in the same house, an adult brother of the patient, himself in
the employ of a greengrocer, was found eating his dinner in the sick room.
It is hardly possible that this very infectious disease should not
have been spread by the folly of these people; and what made their
conduct the more reprehensible was the fact that there was not