A Fatal Banquet.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 11998, 21 February 1903, Page 1 (Supplement)

A Fatal Banquet.

English, papers just to hand give full ; particulars of the typhoid fever epidemic 1 which followed the "fatal mayoral banquet . at Winchester last December. A large i number of the guests, including prominent i citizens of Portsmouth, Winchester, and Southampton, were attacked by the disease, and their illness was generally attributed to some oysters they had eaten. The Dean of Winchester, honoured for thirty years' devoted service to the Church, as well as for several useful works on antiquarian and biographical subjects, was the most distinguished victim to succumb to the disease. The suspected oysters had been obtained from Emsworth, a village ten or twelve miles from Portsmouth, and the home of I the oyster industrv in that part of England. The sewage of the little town runs very close to the beds, which are situated in an inlet, near the shore, and it was supposed must have become contaminated. Doctors differed as to whether this wms the real explanation of the outbreak, and while one medical man stated that at least fourteen cases in Portsmouth were due to eating oysters from Emsworth, another was equally : certain, that the majority of cases in Emsworth itself were due to other causes. The principal Emsworth • oyster-growers denied the slur cast upon the industry vigorously, asserting that the amount of sewage was infinitely small in comparison with the immense volume of water which moves up and down the creek with the tides. To clear up the matter thoroughly, the Sanitary Committee of the Winchester Corporation sent circulars to all present at the banquet, asking what dishes they ate at the dinner, how long afterwards, if at all, they were attacked by the disease, and what their symptoms were. The South of England public did not wait for their replies, and this Christmas the oyster has been " on trial for its life." For three days after the banquet, not one solitary delicacy of this kind entered London from Emsworth. A " Daily Mail" representative, who interrogated ten retailers in the metropolis, found that only four of them had had a customer for oysters during a whole day. This is in spite of the fact that oysters in England have been more plentiful and . cheap this season than for several years past. The Oyster Merchants' Association, ] confronted with a crisis altogether unex- : pected, has appointed an emergency cony ! mittee to deal with the situation, and it . iis probable that one good result of the . epidemic will be increased carefulness with f regard to the drainage of the oyster ports > in future.