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33
Referring to this considerable extension of the disease in the
parish I wrote in my sixth Monthly Report (June 14, page 34),
as follows:—
"As in the previous twenty weeks there 'had been 23 known cases only of
Small-pox in the parish, 13 in North Kensington and 10 in South Kensington, this
outbreak may be deemed sufficiently serious, and the question will naturally arise,
to what cause or causes was it due ? This question I am not in a position to
answer with precision. I will, however, submit what information I have been able
to obtain, and in the first place it has to be remarked that the disease has not been
nearly so prevalent in Chelsea and Fulham as in Kensington. The Medical
Superintendent of the Western Hospital, has obligingly furnished me with
much interesting information, from which it appears that 40 Borough cases were
admitted between May 17 and June 12, of which 26 belonged to Kensington, 10
to Fulham District, and 4 to Chelsea. Eleven of the cases were infected before
thfe Hospital was opened, and 29 after that event. Of the 11 cases, 7 belonged to
Kensington, 1 to Fulham, and 3 to Chelsea, while of the 29 cases, 19, 7 and 3
belonged to the three districts respectively. The earlier 11 cases appear not to
afford much explanation of the subsequent 29 cases, of which 3 were infected
before May 19th, 5 after May 22nd, and 21 (15 of them in Kensington), in the
four days May 19th to 22nd, on which days there were only 5 cases in the hospital.
It is a curious fact that whilst of the 11 cases infected prior to May 15,2 only were in
the "Special Area," by far the larger proportion of the 29 cases infected after May
17th and before May 31, occurred within that area, which represents a circle with a
mile radius, having the hospital for its centre. But of these 29 cases only 2 occurred
within a quarter-mile of the hospital. The histories supplied do not afford much
definite information as to origin of illnesses, but the large preponderance of cases
of domestic servants attacked (in Kensington) will not fail to attract attention,
this having been a notable feature in all the epidemics of Small-pox of which I
have had experience. As usual, many of the servants got infected on a Sunday.
A few of the patients alleged that they had come in contact with persons having
spots on their faces. One man was working near the Hospital, ambulances and
hearses passing quite close to him. Some of the sufferers were unprotected by
vaccination. In two streets only have there been two houses invaded hitherto,
both in South Kensington. In one of these two streets, Victoria Road, more than
a mile from the Hospital, the infection was received at about the same time: one
case was that of a civil servant, the other of a domestic servant. In the second
street, Kempsford Gardens, both sufferers were young children, who may have
come in contact with some third person suffering from the disease, the date of
infection being nearly identical: this street is about a quarter of a mile from the
Hospital. Contact at school may have had something to do with the spread of
disease, but, taken altogether, the information at my disposal is inconsiderable.
The type of disease has hitherto been mild, so far as I can ascertain, and it is quite
conceivable that other cases than those within my knowledge may have been
overlooked, or mistaken for chicken-pox, and that the 'sufferers' have been
acting as peripatetic carriers of the disease."