§ MR. LUPTON (Lincolnshire, Sleaford)I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether the clerks to health authorities in England and Wales carry out the duty imposed on them by Section 8 of the Vaccination Act, 1898, and register the condition as to vaccination of all small-pox patients treated in hospitals maintained by such authorities; and, if so, whether the omissions of medical men to enter in the death certificates relating to such deaths the vaccinal status of 308 out of 507 deaths from small-pox, as recorded in the 67th Report of the Registrar-General for 1904, can be rectified by reference to the aforesaid registers so as to show accurately how many of the deaths recorded by the Registrar-General were deaths of vaccinated persons.
§ MR. JOHN BURNSSo far as I am aware the records required by the section are usually kept. But a reference to them would not show the vaccinal status of all the persons mentioned in the Registrar-General's Report as having died from small-pox. The section only relates to small-pox hospitals maintained by sanitary authorities, and it is known that in 1272 a considerable number of cases the deaths did not occur in these hospitals.