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32
I have already said that the disease appears to have
extended from the adjoining parish of Paddington. I have to
add that, whilst in Kensington it appeared to centre around
a large Board School in the Wornington Road : altogether some
44 cases of children living in 29 houses in 12 streets were connected
with this school, the period of invasion being the month
of August in 11 cases, September in 7 cases, October in 15
cases, November in 10 cases, and December in one case. Eight
eases were connected with the Portobello Road Board School ;
3 in October, 3 in November, and 2 in December. Four
cases were connected with the Edinburgh Road Board School;
3 (in one house) in July, and one in October. Four cases were
connected with the Buckingham Terrace Board School ; 3 in
October, and one in November. Four cases were connected
with the Latymer Road (Hammersmith) Board School ; three
in September, and one in October. Five Church Schools had 10
cases—one in each of 4 schools, and six in another school, St.
Andrew's. One of these six cases occurred in June, one in September,
two in October, one in November, and one in December.
In all, therefore, 74 of the 122 sufferers were school children,
and 44 of them were pupils at Wornington Road Board School,
and almost exclusively in the Infants' Department. It is to be
noted, however, that several children belonging to this school
had been attacked with diphtheria during the summer vacation—
a fact which puzzled me until I discovered that the disease had
been prevalent in the adjacent parish, from which it travelled
westward into the streets—already named—clustering round the
school buildings.
The school authorities were assiduous in their efforts to
prevent the spread of the disease by exclusion of suspicious cases,
which were duly reported to me; but they laboured necessarily
under a difficulty arising from the fact that diphtheria presents
no external eruption to attract attention to it as something
different from a common or non-specific sore throat. Slight cases,
therefore, are liable to escape notice, and to the occurrence of