View report page

31
Kensington cases were of domestic servants, 37 out of 101. Of
the 37 cases, 32 were female servants, from thirty houses. From
three houses six servants were removed to hospital, two from a
house; the primary case in each instance having been either
overlooked at first or mistaken for chicken-pox. The "upper
classes" escaped, personally, in a remarkable degree, probably as
the result of proper attention to vaccination and re-vaccination.
Thirty of the 101 cases in South Kensington were secondary,.
i.e., they followed on known primary cases in the same houses.
Five cases were imported from other districts. Three persons
walked into the hospital, and two were removed from out-patient
rooms at public institutions. Of the 76 cases in North Kensington,
26 were secondary and 2 were imported. One case was driven
to hospital hi a private vehicle; the removed patients otherwise
were conveyed in the Asylum Board's ambulances.
In a subsequent section of the report there will be found
a tabular statement of the number of cases of small-pox recorded in
1884, the year having been divided into two parts representing,
respectively, the periods before and after the re-opening of the
Western Hospital at Fulham. Before the re-opening of the
hospital, which took place on May 17th, 23 cases were recorded
in Kensington. The first case was imported from Hackney and
occurred at Dartmoor Street, South Kensington. The child's
illness, which commenced December 19th, 1883, was concealed
from the other inmates of the house, three of whom, in two'
families, fell ill in January. In March, a journeyman tailor fell ill
at Wallgrave Boad, South Kensington. This man, the origin of
whose illness could not be traced, presented himself for treatment
at the dispensary in Marloes Road. The eruption of small-pox
was fully developed, and according to the man's own statement
not only had he been sleeping several nights in the same bed with
another man, ignorant of the nature of his illness, but he had also
been going about as usual by day. Interesting as were the above
cases, they do not appear to have been the cause of any small-pox
spread in Kensington, for during the four weeks ended April 19th,,
no case of the disease was recorded.