Page:How contagion and infection are spread, through the sweating system in the tailoring trade.djvu/14

8 The following is an extract from the Sanitary Record, of October 1874:—

Dr. Page points out one fruitful source of contagion:—"In the course of a recent inquiry into the prevalence of scarlet fever in a village, at one house he found a man, a tailor by trade, engaged at his work, while his two children, convalescent from scarlet fever, from whose hands and bodies the skin was abundantly coming off in flakes, were sitting in the same room, and in actual contact with the apparel lying around him." It is not possible to conceive a more certain means than this of infecting clothes, by which the poison might be carried afterwards to any distance and retained for any length of time. It is probable that many of these outbreaks of infectious diseases in distant and isolated houses, the explanation of which is a puzzle to everyone, may owe their causation to similar sources of infection.—The Sanitary Record.

"At the Sheffield Police Court yesterday, Hannah Turner, living at Chapeltown, was summoned for not taking proper precautions against the spread of infection. The defendant is a seamstress, and on the 21st of September a dress was sent to her to be mended by a woman named Kneeshaw. At this time the defendant had a child ill of scarlatina. The dress was returned on the 29th of the same month. Soon after, four of Mrs. Kneeshaw's children became ill of scarlatina, and two of them died. It was proved that the disease had been transmitted with the dress. As the defendant was ignorant of the law, a fine of 1s. and costs only was imposed."—Manchester Guardian, December 2nd, 1874.

On a recent occasion the following letter appeared in the Lancet:—

"We have within the last few months given many illustrations of the perils which beset the public by reason of the careless system of giving out work indiscriminately, which obtains in certain trades. What are known as the 'sweating' and 'home-work' systems among tailors are pregnant with danger to the general health, and it would be interesting to know, even approximately, how many cases of smallpox in the present epidemic depended on the reception in the house of clothes which had been made in infected rooms, or by persons barely convalescent from the disease. The natural remedy for such a state of things would be for tradespeople to provide workrooms in which all their orders for wearing apparel would be executed, and where the hands employed would be under inspection. Failing this it might be possible to effect an extension of the Workshops Act. Any way, the duty devolves on tradesmen at the present time of exercising a careful supervision over making clothes. A medical man writes to us this week to state that a short time back he had under his care several severe cases of scarlet