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38
Measles.— 18 children died from it. The number is below the
average (26.9).
Scarlet Fever.— The District, with the rest of London, suffered
from the epidemic of scarlet fever of last year. We lost 38: all children
(decennial average 33.7).
Diphtheria.— 4 deaths occurred from this disease (decennial
average 3.4).
Qcinsy.— This disease, which is so rarely fatal, caused us the death
of 1 adult.
Croup carried off 3 children.
Whooping- Cough did not affect us so severely as in 1878, but
still we lost 34 children, against 65 in the preceding year (decennial
average 39'2).
Fever (Typhus).— This infectious form of fever, which had been
absent from the District since 1874, reappeared this year, and in its
old haunts— Lincoln and Orange Courts.
Dr. Ross, in his Annual Report to the Board, in 1874, said (page 41):
"It wiil be in the recollection of the Board, that in my Report for 1873,
I described the outbreak of typhus fever in the Great Wild Street
section of this District, an outbreak that originated in Lincoln Court;
for two years, therefore, this endemic has haunted this quarter.
Lincoln Court has long been notorious as the nestling place of
fever, and your Board has on numerous occasions insisted upon
large improvements being carried out there; but it has long been
obvious that no partial measures can have any avail in destroying the
seeds of pestilence in that locality."
The outbreak in 1879 may be divided into two distinct groups of
cases:—
The first case of the first group occurred on 22nd August, when
the House Physician of King's College Hospital informed the Medical
Officer of Health of the Strand District, that a young woman, Hannah
L, set. 30, was admitted to the Hospital the previous day from
Bear Yard, Lincoln's Inn Fields, in the Strand District, suffering from
typhus fever. On receiving this information, the Medical Officer
visited the house, and ordered the rooms to be disinfected, and
ascertained that the woman had slept there about five nights before
she went to the Hospital for advice, and that previous to her residence
in Bear Yard she lived in Lincoln Court, Drury Lane, which is in
St. Giles District. The Medical Officer of the Strand District gave
me the history of the case as far as he knew it, but it was of little use to
me, inasmuch as the houses in Lincoln Court, being included in the area
condemned by the Metropolitan Board of Works, were cleared of their
inhabitants on the 3rd August, and were demolished before the woman
went to the Hospital; it was therefore impossible for her to have been
resident in Lincoln Court at the time she stated, but she may have
lived there before August 3rd. I was here baffled in my inquiries;
and as she died, nothing further could be discovered of her history
prior to her living in Bear Yard. The woman died of typhus fever.