SIR WALTER FOSTER (Derbyshire Ilkeston)To ask the President of the Local Government Board if, in view of the outbreak of diphtheria at the Norwood Poor Law Schools which has extended to sixty-one children, notwithstanding the care and skill taken for its prevention, he will consider the advisability of breaking up this aggregation of 500 children, in accordance with the recommendations of the Departmental Committee's Report of 1897.
(Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) It appears to be doubtful whether there can properly be said to have been an outbreak of diphtheria at these schools in the sense in which that expression is ordinarily understood. I am informed that only three of the cases presented the ordinary clinical symptoms of tin disease, and that in the renaming cases there had been no disturbance of the children's health, although the bacillus of diphtheria or some other bacillus resembling it had been discovered by bacteriological methods. It does not seem to be necessary to consider the advisability of breaking up the school.