Vaccination, 153 



Robinson, one of your sureeons, called upon me in the 

 mnrnins, to say he h.id been to visit a poor woman at the 

 Waggon and Horses, in St. Giles's-street, who had just 

 been brous:;ht thither from the London waggon, and that 

 she was in the eruptive stage of the small- pox, and he was 

 very anxious that I should advise him how she could be dis- 

 posed of. I told him, i feared I had now no power either 

 as a magistrate or as a guardian to direct in such a ca'je, as 

 a late resolution of the court had rescinded the orders, 

 under uhich, heretofore, patients under such circumstances 

 had bef-n sent to the Infirmary ; but I wished him to apply 

 to Mr. S'mpson, the clerk of the court of guardians, to 

 ^iv. Lubbock, the mayor's justice clerk, and to the chief 

 magistrate himself; all which Mr. Robinson took the trouble 

 of doing, but to no purpose — there was no place to which 

 she could be sent, and she was under the necessity of going 

 through this infectious disease at a public-house, in a pub- 

 lic street, and at a public time when there was a more than 

 usual number of strangers in the city. The consequences 

 were obvious — a person in the public- house caught the 

 disease, from whom it was communicated to another in 

 the neighbourhood, and thence it gradually spread to the 

 several parts of the city, and continued its ravages among 

 the poor to the end of the year 18U9; tluring winch lime, 

 no less a number of deaths from this dreadful disease thaa 

 TWO HUNDRED AND THREE were recorded in the weekly 

 bills of mortality. 1 he greatest fatality was in 1S08, in 

 some weeks ten, thirteen, and even fil'ieen died; and from 

 June 1808 to June 1 S09 the number of deaths was 17 1. 



I am satisfied that these accounts are correct; and I feel 

 no small gratification in reflecting, that a record so impor- 

 tant to humanity would not have existed, liad I not, when 

 mayor, directed tlie keeper of the bdls of mortality to no- 

 tice every death from the small-pox. In a statistical as 

 well as moral view, these faw-ts are highly interesting. I 

 think it likely, as there are few adults in populous places 

 who have not had the small-pox, that this long list of 

 deaths consisted almost entirely of children ; and if the 

 conmion average of deaths Irom small-pox, as derived from 

 tables kept for a series of years in London, Paris, Vienna, 

 aad (jther large cities in E-urope, be correct, and which is 

 one in six, ii is evident, that within this period more than 

 twelve hundred individuals must have had the disease; and 

 the prolv'ibility of these being children is increased, by tiiis 

 number so strikingly corresponding with the nuinber of 

 tmlhj in three years in that class of society liable to the 



disease. 



