Dr. Airy's report to the Local Government Board on an outbreak of diphtheria in 1889 in the Samford rural sanitary district (Suffolk) / [Hubert Airy].

  • Airy, Hubert, 1838-1903.
Date:
[1890]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. Airy's report to the Local Government Board on an outbreak of diphtheria in 1889 in the Samford rural sanitary district (Suffolk) / [Hubert Airy]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    m _ Dr. Airy’s Report to the Local Government Board on an **--r£LLCO* Outbreak of Diphtheria in 1889 in the Samford Rural - Sanitary District (Suffolk). u IBRAR\ .vcneral Collect +P 49 George Buchanan, Medical Department, June 21st, 1890. The occurrence of four deaths attributed to diphtheria in the second quarter of the year (1889), followed by sis in the third quarter, in the Holbrook sub¬ district of the Samford registration district, a district hitherto remarkably free from that disease, gave cause for inquiry by the Medical Department of the Board. Under the instructions of the Board I visited the district on December 10, 1889, and following days, in concert with the officers of the Rural Sanitary Authority, from whom I received the greatest assistance in the prosecution of the inquiry. The Samford rural district occupies a roughly triangular tract of agri¬ cultural country in the south of Suffolk, between the Rivers Orwell on the north, and Stour on the south, with an irregular base to the west, and a well-defined apes to the east at Shotley Point where the two rivers join to- form Harwich harbour. The district is divided, for registration purposes, into two sub-districts (1) Capel St. Mary to the west, and (2) Holbrook to the east. The former comprises 15 parishes, with a population (in 1881) of 5,837; the latter, 13 parishes, population 5,761. In both there was considerable falling off since the previous census. Geologically this region consists of Suffolk Crag and sands based upon the London Clay, and covered, except on the valley slopes, with a capping of Drift Gravel. Good water is found in, or flowing from, the crag, and sand beds. Agriculture forms the chief occupation of the people, but at Pin Mill on the Orwell there is a seafaring element, and at Shotley Fort a military element; and at Brantham on the Stour within the last few years the establishment of xylonite works (an offshoot from a parent factory at Hackney) has introduced a thriving manufacturing element. The health of the population, as indicated by the general death-rate, is good. The average annual death-rate in the 10 years 1861-70 was 19*06 per 1,000; in the next 10 years, 1871-80, it was 17*81, and in the last nine years, 1881-89, it was 17 * 14. The mortality from diphtheria in particular, in recent years, has been very Diphtheria, small, until we come to the outbreak which is the subject of the present inquiry. In the 10 years, 1861-70, the annual average death-rate from diphtheria was 0*45 per 1,000. In the following 18 years, 1870-88, there were only 18 deaths from diphtheria, giving an annual death-rate of less than 0*09 per 1,000, estimated on the population enumerated at the census in 1881. Indeed in the Holbrook sub-district there had not been registered a single death from diphtheria since the first quarter of 1882. Suddenly in 1889 diphtheria breaks out in a fatal form and kills 15 persons in the H olbrook sub-district, a greater number than this disease had killed in 15 years before in the whole Samford district, giving a death-rate for that year of 1*29 per 1,000, or, if vie take only the population of the Holbrook sub-district, to which the epidemic was confined, a death-rate of 2*60 per 1,000. TJ 63085. 150.—6/90. Wt. 4626. E. & S. A