§ MR. O'DONNELLasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If he has received information that small-pox was imported into the east end of London by vessels trading with Madras and Calcutta; and, if he is aware that a severe epidemic of small-pox has been raging for several months past in both these towns?
§ SIR CHARLES W. DILKEThis matter has nothing to do with the Home Department. The only small-pox cases in the present epidemic that I know of as having relations with such vessels are the cases of five Lascars who were removed from the steamship Eldorado into Homerton Hospital. The Eldorado, however, happened to be outward bound. She had been lying in Port 20 days previously, and her infection clearly originated in London. This was in last November, when Homerton Hospital already contained 37 small-pox patients. As to any more recent introductions of small-pox into the Port, I have no information—none since Christmas, 1883. But at that time the disease was already epidemic, to a moderate extent, in London; and any subsequent importation that may have taken place is, probably, of no particular concern. A severe epidemic of small-pox has been prevailing since last autumn in Madras; it reached its highest mortality in March, when it was fatal to nearly one per 1,000 weekly. There is some small-pox, but no epidemic small-pox, in Calcutta, beginning in the early months of this year, but little above the mean.