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13 of these were in the north district, including 8 in the practice
of one medical firm. I have little doubt that there were a
good many cases of which we never heard at all. The disease
existed at Lockton Street, Bramley Road, Manchester Street,
Silchester Terrace, Walmer Road, and Talbot Grove. The case at
Talbot Grove was the daughter of a laundress : we endeavoured
to get her removed to hospital, or alternatively to have the business
temporarily suspended, or carried on at other premises, but
without success. At one house in Lockton Street there were
6 cases in the family of a greengrocer, between Sept. 26 and Dec. 1.
This outbreak, of which we did not hear till October 20, may
have originated in sanitary defects, which the occupier, who was
also the owner of the house, had promised to rectify. He was
the first to be attacked, and he died after a lingering illness in
December. The subsequent cases were probably due to infection,
no special precautions having been taken to prevent the
disease from spreading. It was unfortunate, in any case, that
we could not get any of the patients removed to hospital: the
family occupied the whole of a seven roomed house, and removal
was considered unnecessary by the medical attendant. Not until
many weeks after this outbreak was at an end, did I hear of
another local outbreak, which appeared to be intimately connected
with it. It occurred in a family residing in Manchester
Street. There were five cases, and two of the sufferers, brothers,
aged 17 and 11 respectively, had been in the employment of
the greengrocer in Lockton-street. These youths fell ill
some time in November ; a younger brother and a sister fell ill
at the end of the month, and their father about the middle of
December. The father and the eldest son died in hospitals
outside the parish, and as none of the cases had been reported, we
were in ignorance of the matter, until February, in the present,
year, when I received from the Medical Officer of Health for
Paddington, information of the son's death at St. Mary's Hospital.
A question has been raised whether enteric fever is infectious
? I have already stated that there was ground for
the suspicion, that the first case in the family, at Lockton-street,