Mr. Spear's report to the Local Government Board upon an outbreak of enteric fever in the Pemberton urban sanitary district, Lancashire / [John Spear].
- Spear, John.
- Date:
- [1890]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Mr. Spear's report to the Local Government Board upon an outbreak of enteric fever in the Pemberton urban sanitary district, Lancashire / [John Spear]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![themselves on the north side, in the midst of what afterwards became the chief infected locality. It may be suspected that the children of the locality were more likely, in the spending of their half-pence, to patronise their own neighbour’s stall, and, when the unsold residue of the pease-pudding, &c., came to be given away in the evening, as I am informed it was, it may be suspected that neighbours’ children were the most favoured recipients. That this was so, in fact, is not wholly a matter of suspicion, but may be inferred from the number of neighbours’ children known to have partaken of the articles in question, and the limited amount represented to have been made. Previous histurj of enteric fever in the district. The circumstances of this outbreak received an additional interest when inquiry into past history of the district disclosed a remarkable correspondence between the recent experiences and those of an epidemic in the same locality in 1880. The latter was investigated by Dr. Airy for the Local Government Board. Comparison between the two periods, so far as information allows, is made below. 1880. May : Death from typhoid fever in a house between Lamberhead Green and Wigan. District free until the middle of July. Three houses in three different streets of Lamberhead Green then invaded. No fresh cases until the beginning of the second week of August (dating cases from medical aid). Then five fresh cases in different families on five successive days. On August 14th great increase. Fresh families in different directions found to be infected at rate of four or five a day. From 23rd of August rapid decline. Disease widely distributed. Epidemic, however, broke out and was concentrated in the two sanitary divisions of Lamberhead Green. No comparable experience in the district for some years previous. Nevertheless, mortality from fever in the district above the average in the country. -w 8. ■ '; A Fatality of recognised attacks during epidemic period about 7 per cent. 1889. The same. The same, except for a household out¬ break at an outlying farm in a different direction. Two houses in two different streets of Lamberhead Green, and one between Lamberhead Green and New Town, then invaded. No fresh cases until 30th July (dating cases from first symptoms). Then in two days three families infected ; in first three days of August 15 ; in follow¬ ing week 17. Then rapid decline of infec¬ tion, epidemic spread ceasing before the end of August. Disease extended beyond Lamberhead Green, but less widely. It broke out and was concentrated in the two divisions of that village. The same. [Deaths from fever since 1880 in the Pem¬ berton and Orrell urban sanitary districts as follows :— 1880 25 1885 - 3 1881 7 1886 5 1882 10 1887 “ 1 1883 7 1888 - 4 1884 7 1889 - 17] About 12 per cent. The sanitary circumstances of Lamberhead Green during the two periods, together with those other circumstances considered above as possibly associated with the epidemic of 1889, may be thus compared:— 1880. 1889. Water Supply. Chiefly from a local spring ; some surface Almost exclusively from the public wells. Public water supply very partially supply, introduced. Sewerages. Pemberton Division.— Public sewers; im- The same, perfectly ventilated and flushed; certain sewers with poor gradient. A few catch- pits in the line of the sewers.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30558001_0006.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
