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of £66 13s. 10d. has to be credited the sum of £14 13s. received
from persons who could afford to pay for disinfection of their
clothes and houses. The whole of the gullies in the district
were also disinfected, some more than once; numerous dead
animals, putrid fish, and offensive offal were removed and buried
by the men employed for disinfection, and the whole of the public
and private urinals were tarred by the same men under the
direction of the inspectors.
The number of smallpox cases brought to our notice during
the year was only 35, of which 17 occurred in 6 houses, and 18
in 18 houses; that is to say, in the latter, one case occurred in a
house. The disease, in all instances except one, was confined to
one house in a street, which I attribute to the active disinfection,
the speedy removal of the sick, or their strict isolation, and the
re-vaccination of the inmates in many of the houses. In these
houses where two or more cases occurred, we were not informed
of the first case, so that the others were infected before we could
interfere. In two instances the parents refused to allow their
children to be removed to the hospital, but on a threat being
made that I would apply to a magistrate, they were induced to
let them go. We were not able to trace the source of infection
in more than two instances; in one a man worked in a house
situated in another parish that had been lately occupied by a
smallpox patient, and had not been disinfected. In the other, a
cake and book were sent by a person recovering from smallpox
to a child, who had premonitory symptoms a few days afterwards,
and the rash on the twelfth day. These cases show the danger of
sending books, &c., from an infected room to healthy people, and
also of working in infected rooms.
During the year 51 cases of typhoid fever were reported to
me, and a special examination of the drains and water-supply
apparatus in all the houses was made by the Senior Inspector,
but in four houses only were defective drains discovered, and in
no instance was there any defect in the water-supply apparatus.
In two cases death was attributed to foul-smelling sewer openings