[Report 1917] / Medical Officer of Health, Middlesex County Council.

  • Middlesex (England). County Council. n 99020326.
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1917] / Medical Officer of Health, Middlesex County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    outside a very large munition factory; his wife, who took an active part in mixing the ice-cream, served in the shop. The upper floors were occupied as tenements by two families, of four and of ten persons respectively. The premises were overcrowded, dirty arid neglected; at the rear of the shop was a back addition building, in which the ice¬ cream wTas manufactured, and in which it was afterwards stored, in an unlighted and unventilated cupboard iu a scullery, until needed for sale. The outhouse and yard were littered with empty baskets and other rubbish, and the yard contained a cramped fowl-run. The conditions were such that the place was not a suitable one in which to prepare a food-stuff. The case, the occurrence of which attracted attention to the place, was that of a child, aged 10 years, a member of the family of ten occupying the upper rooms. This child was ill for nine days before her case was notified and she was removed to hospital ; during that time she was nursed at home and her soiled linen was washed in the tenement, the waste waters being poured into a scullery sink which discharged over a gulley in the back yard, close to where the ice-cream was made and stored. The gulley was defective, becoming choked at times and allowing of over¬ flow into the yard of the adjoining house. It was found upon inquiry that, of nine of the other enteric fever patients, three had partaken of ice-cream from this shop and three others had eaten sweetmeats purchased there. One other patient resided next door to the premises, in the house into the yard of which the defective gulley overflowed. In the absence of suspicion that milk or water used in the ice-cream was concerned in the conveyance of infection, and in view of the fact that at a later stage Dr. Andrew found that other patients besides those mentioned above had eaten of the ice-cream or had purchased sweetmeats at the shop, attention was called to those who handled the articles sold. With considerable difficulty and in spite of much objection and opposition the Italian shop-keeper and his family were induced to allow of the taking of blood specimens for examination. The reaction proved positive in the case of the wife. After her admission to hospital the fact was elicited that she had been ill and had suffered from diarrhoea about Easter-time; full evidence was also found that she was a u carrier” of the disease, her excretions being found to contain the
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