In his report the Medical Officer recommends ‘the immediate breaking up of all the schools at Royston, at Foxton, and at Thriplow.’
It starts with a sore throat, headache, fever, nausea and vomiting. Within a day a rash develops on the stomach or chest and spreads over the whole body. The cheeks of infected children flush red, their lips grow pallid and a white coating appears on the tongue. Some develop rheumatic fever or pneumonia.
The whole country is in the grip of a pandemic which started more than thirty years earlier. Nobody counts how many people fall ill, but it is in the hundreds of thousands. [Read on…]