Controlling the spread of disease in Manchester, 1905

The UK government’s Track and Trace system introduced to manage the spread of COVID-19 is certainly new in its approach, but monitoring outbreaks of infectious disease is nothing new.

Outbreaks of cholera, typhoid, smallpox, tuberculosis, and influenza (to mention but a few) plagued millions throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, leading to the systematic reporting of cases to control infection and monitor mortality rates by public health officials. Foodstuffs in particular were of great concern to officials who attributed the spread of bovine tuberculosis to unpasteurised milk and raw or undercooked meat.

The following entry from a 1905 report carried out by the Medical Officer of Health for the Manchester district highlights how the reporting of contaminated food was taken seriously. Though an isolated and less serious case, the report cites the Strangeways Refuge as a potential source or place in which infection was likely to have been spread:

J. Niven, Report of the health of the city of Manchester (1905)

Only across the page from the entry seen above, a report documenting another questionable article of the leafy variety shows how a woman elsewhere in Manchester fell ill after consuming lettuce, which may have been contaminated by flies. 

There is scant reference to other occurrences of infection elsewhere in the charity's homes in such reports, however, a 1912 Interim Report of the Departmental Committee on Tuberculosis notes a potential number of beds which could be set aside for the care of those with 'phthisis' (pulmonary tuberculosis) at the Bethesda home. Our records show very few cases of tuberculosis in the home around this time, suggesting that isolation of cases, increased medical awareness, and systematic reporting reduced the rate of infection.