A GERM DANCER.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 135, 31 July 1911, Page 7

A GERM DANCER.

SECOND-HAND CLOTHES AND DISEASE. THE NEED OF FUMIGATION. The people who purchase clothes from a second-hand shop rarely consider by what means the articles of attire have been placed on the market a second time, and the possibilities of infection are not often thought of, says the Christchurch “Press.” Entering a second-hand clothes shop, there is always a musty smell to greet a prospective buyer, with a sight of costumes of all kinds, suspended indiscriminately. All these clothes huddle together and tlie customer has a large assortment from which to select his purchase. A sec-ond-hand shop deals in all manner of clothing, from well-cut dress suits to slop-made sac suits, from ladies’ evening dresses to ladies’ blouses and underwear, and these arc arranged in orderly heaps. Everywhere the articles are clean in appearanace and made to look as tempting as secondhand clothes can be made to look, hut there is behind it all the danger that does not appear to the eye.

When a second-hand clothes dealer purchases left-off clothing his chief object is to prepare it for sale and to sell it as quickly as possible, since a second-hand dealer’s stock must soon get very large. The method adopted in most of these, shops is simple. The clothing is first cleaned thoroughly and mended, and if necessary pressing is resorted to. After that the clothing is ready for sale. A reporter asked a well-known dealer if any system of fumigation was adopted, and he was told that it was not necessary. “Mhen people die of infectious disease, or when they have had any infectious ailment,” ho said, “tiie clothing is destroyed, and we don’t see it at all.”

“Then you take the risk?” said the reporter.

“Oh, there is no risk,” came the reply. “But do you ask people from whom you buy any account of the wearer of the clothes?” urged the reporter. “Oh, no, and if we did a man trying to sell clothes would not tell us if ho had had any disease.” Another gentleman who has had considerable experience of second-hand shops termed them hotbeds for the multiplication and spread of germs. “There is no fumigation,” ho said, “and with the clothes hanging up touching each other the danger of contagion is apparent. It is impossible to prevent clothes worn by people suffering from, say, consumption, or any other disease being sold to sec-ond-hand dealers. The first suggestion is, of course, to do away with the shops, but that would work a great hardship to many poor people who cannot afford to buy new clothes, but the authorities might take into consideration the question of the fumigation of all second-hand clothes.”

Dr H. E. Finch, the District Health Officer, said that in all cases where infections diseases were treated by medical men the clothing was destroyed, but there would always bo the danger of people selling clothing before doctors wore coiled in. Consumption was a danger and wild very* easily be spread by the clothing.. It would be difficult to enforce fumigation, because there would lie no nay of branding, but ilicre is no doubt that if a second-hand dealer went in for fumigation he could command ilie public confidence. The act ,ial work of fumigation would he simple. At the hospital there is the apparatus fin steam fumigation, and it would be possible to effectively treat a large stock in a very few nri;ut?s a quarter of an hour or so—incl the expense would he small.