ABSTRACT
Yet this was not the only outcome that was particularly unusual among the major epidemics of typhoid that struck three very different English towns in the ‘Hungry Thirties’: Malton, North Yorkshire (1932); Bournemouth, Hampshire (1936); and Croydon, Surrey (1937). Typhoid is a bacterial disease, transmitted faecal-orally. Epidemics often began as a result of healthy carriers of the disease contaminating water or milk supplies.3 Complaints about typhoid from the local residents in Croydon included a deputation to Whitehall, the seat of British governmental administration in London, in order to present a petition for the inquiry. Even before this, the epidemic was unusual in receiving significant national news coverage when it was in its earliest stages, and as such supports other chapters in this collection by emphasising the centrality of the media in revealing and shaping complaint. From 4 November 1937, there were reports of 10 people being unwell in Croydon in the major national newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph, Daily Herald, Daily Express and The Times, and even the Scottish Glasgow Herald.4 Following the inquiry, local residents successfully campaigned for the mass compensation of 260 sufferers from the disease, arguing that the local authority had been negligent. A test case resulted in the payment of a total sum of £92,000 (the equivalent of approximately £3 million today) in damages and costs.5 With the test case occurring in November 1938, a year after the epidemic, a Bill had to be passed in Parliament to extend the usual time limit for payments allowed under the Public Authorities Protection Act,
1893. The change in the law resulting from the Bill led to a much wider discussion in the House of Commons regarding patients’ right to complain, with several earlier cases discussed. The limitation for claims was changed from six to 12 months after an incident. The limit was already 12 months for fatalities.6 Indeed, this chapter may be considered the prelude not only to Mold’s discussion of patient groups in this volume but also to McHale’s assessment of the impact of complaints in pushing forward the legal framework for complaining about medicine. This sequence of events and the number of successful claims in Croydon are unique in British history and, considering the difficulties in claiming for such epidemics, the Croydon test case should be iconic in demonstrating how a successful compensation claim can be made for an epidemic.7 At the time, the Modern Law Review reported that it was ‘rare for the circumstances giving rise to an action to have effects as far-reaching and, ultimately, as beneficial as in this case’.8 The importance of the case for environmental law has been recognised.9 However, in her discussion of disease and compensation, legal historian Jane Stapleton argues that the use of test cases for class actions are only a ‘remote possibility’ in Britain, in contrast to the US, where they have been used for pharmaceutical and environmental contamination litigation. For infectious disease,
it is unclear how far courts would hold the party responsible for the initial contagion or contamination liable for the catastrophic results. Even though the courts might want to avoid the potential multiplication of litigation recognition [that] such a duty might entail, in practice they might be swayed by compensatory policies in those few cases where medical causation could be traced and proven.10
