1937 Croydon typhoid outbreak

Addington well

Around 40,000 people—between one-sixth and one-fifth of Croydon's population of about 250,000—received water from the Addington well, sunk into chalk ground in 1885. The well was 250 feet deep and 10 feet wide, one of five supplying Croydon, and collected water from ground that included cesspools and a pig farm. Water from the Addington and Stroud Green wells fed the Addington Well Pumping Station, where it was filtered, chlorinated, and filtered again before entering the Addington reservoir and a high-level system.

Croydon Corporation had installed various treatment methods in 1908, 1928, and 1936, including an ozone plant, rapid pressure filters, a chlorinating plant, and an ammoniating plant. The filters and chlorinator operated together and could not be used separately, which later caused problems during repairs. Regular chlorination of the Addington well water began on 20 July 1936 due to worrying E. coli levels, but without continuous recording. Monthly testing of reservoir and well waters stopped at the end of April 1937, apparently by mere oversight.

Sequence of events

Between mid-September and 15 October 1937, while repairs were underway at the Addington well, water that had not been filtered or chlorinated was pumped out as waste. Starting 16 October, this untreated raw water began flowing into the public supply, though neither the borough engineer, Charles Boast, nor the medical officer of health, Oscar Holden, knew about it. A man later identified as a typhoid carrier worked at the well from 28 September to 26 October 1937.

At first, authorities suspected the illness came from infected shellfish imported from mainland Europe, because the earliest case in 1937 appeared in mid-October and involved someone who had recently traveled to France. As more people fell ill, an inquiry was launched. Harold Murphy, KC, a lawyer appointed by the Ministry of Health, determined that the first case was actually reported on 27 October 1937, not the one linked to the French trip. He recorded a second case on 28 October and two more on 30 October. Historian Anne Hardy later described the shellfish-related incident on 16 October as the first case, with the second on 25 October and four additional cases on 29 October.

Among those diagnosed in late October 1937 was Richard Rimington, who later died. His father, Charles Rimington, an employee of the Bank of England, carried out his own investigation. By visiting and questioning people he knew who were affected, he concluded the water supply was to blame. He told Boast and presented his findings to Holden, writing that his son, a maid from a nearby house, and a little girl from another house had all developed typhoid. Their milk supplies differed, and none had eaten shellfish or watercress. The only common factor, he noted, was water, and recent work had been done on the water supply in their road.

Inquiry

In late 1937, an inquiry into the Croydon typhoid outbreak was led by Harold Murphy, with expert assessors Harold Gourley and Sir Humphry Rolleston appointed on 22 November. The hearings started on 6 December while the outbreak was still ongoing, and the transcript ran to over a thousand pages. Croydon Corporation was represented by Sir Walter Monckton. Murphy later told the Minister of Health that the outbreak was directly caused by contamination of the public water supply from a chalk well in Addington.

He could not say with absolute certainty how the well became infected, but the evidence pointed strongly to workers in the well during late September and October 1937, one of whom was an active typhoid carrier. For much of that time, water from the well was pumped into the supply without being filtered or chlorinated. The inquiry lasted sixteen days, and its findings were published as a white paper on 14 February 1938. Murphy identified the source as a workman referred to as "Case A," who had caught typhoid during the First World War but did not know he was a carrier. He worked on the Addington well from 28 September to 26 October 1937.

Aftermath and responses

Legal claims against Croydon Corporation began in spring 1938, with about 230 claims filed. It was decided to use one test case, where the father of a survivor successfully argued that the water undertaker was liable. In December 1938, the test case Read v. Croydon Corporation was heard in the High Court, resulting in compensation for medical expenses, pain and suffering, and general inconvenience. The outbreak attracted national media attention, reflected in 17 volumes of newspaper scrapbooks collected by Walter Monckton and the Corporation.

The Daily Sketch described Croydon in 1937 as 'a dangerous and frightening place'. With 75% of the British population owning a wireless by the late 1930s, the BBC publicised news on the outbreak. Workers from Croydon faced stigmatisation by London colleagues. A detailed review appeared in The American Journal of Public Health.

Between 1937 and 1986, the UK experienced over 11,794 cases of water-borne disease across 34 outbreaks, with at least six deaths. In 1979, The Classical Quarterly called the 1937 outbreak the 'most recent serious event of this kind' in the country, typical of large populations drawing water from a central source. Bacteriologist Hugh Pennington, in his 2003 book When Food Kills, quoted the Croydon public inquiry's conclusion of misunderstanding and lack of communication between responsible officers, calling this a recurrent theme in disaster incubation periods.