Mystery of the world's last smallpox death 40 years on; University photographer's favour to friends may have sealed her fate.
Byline: Andy Richards News Editor andy.richards@trinitymirror.comDOING a good turn for workmates may have cost Birmingham medical photographer Janet Parker her life - the last person in the world to die of smallpox.
The new theory follows an investigation by the Post's sister paper, the Birmingham Mail, into the 1978 tragedy which shook the medical world. It involved fresh examination of the evidence and interviews with people involved, many of whom have spoken for the first time.
It hints that Parker, who was 40, and lived in Kings Norton, may not have contracted the disease in the way official investigators thought most likely.
Parker, a photographer at the University of Birmingham Medical School in Edgbaston, became the last person in the world to die from the deadly virus. It was eradicated across the globe a short time later.
An official inquiry suggested that the most likely way Parker caught it was as a result of airborne infection.
It was thought the virus travelled by air ducts from a laboratory where smallpox research was being carried out, to a room on the floor above where she was working.
But magistrates later appeared to dismiss that as the reason when they cleared the university of a health and safety charge in a case successfully defended by eminent barrister Brian Escott-Cox QC.
How Parker came to be infected has remained an enduring mystery and the subject of much conjecture.
Now, Mr Escott-Cox, who is retired, has broken a 40-year silence to suggest his own theory about what happened.
And a re-examination of documentation has resulted in the discovery of new evidence which supports it.
The episode happened in the summer of 1978.
Tragically it took another life, that of head of the laboratory, Professor Henry Bedson, who was one of the world's leading virologists, after he took his own life.
Mr Escott-Cox would later prosecute the first case in the world where a murderer was brought to justice on DNA evidence when double child killer Colin Pitchford was convicted at Leicester Crown Court in 1988.
But defending the University of Birmingham in the smallpox case a decade earlier remains vivid in his memory.
He said: "It was clear to me before the case even started that we were going to be able to prove absolutely beyond any question of doubt whatsoever, that airborne infection of smallpox cannot take place other than between two people who are face to face, less than ten inches apart."
"Unhappily, inevitably, once you have proven beyond any question of doubt that the smallpox could not have escaped from the laboratory and gone to Janet Parker, the overwhelming inference is that Janet Parker must, in some way or other, have come to the smallpox. How that came about, I don't know, we shall never know, but I think from those facts it is an inevitable inference and nothing else really stands up to any commonsense view.
"I have my own personal views about this.
"I need, I think, to be very careful about how I express them because part of it is factual and inferences which might be drawn from proven facts and the other is probably little more than gossip."
The official inquiry into the incident, which was carried out by Professor Reginald Shooter on behalf of the Government, concluded that Parker was infected with a strain of the disease called Abid, which was handled in what was generally known as "the pox lab" on Tuesday, July 25 1978.
The lab was divided into a tiny smallpox research room and a larger animal pox room.
A former police photographer, Parker was then working in the anatomy department of the university's medical school, mainly snapping slides but occasionally animals in the primate colony which was kept at that time.
On July 25, Parker was very busy using a telephone in the room almost directly above the pox lab to order photographic stock, spending much of the day there. The rooms were linked by air ducts She first began to feel poorly on Friday, August 11. But local GPs hadn't seen a case of smallpox in years and they suspected she had chickenpox or the flu.
It was not until Thursday, August 24 that she was admitted to hospital and a diagnosis of smallpox was made.
But if Parker contracted the disease in this way, it has to be supported by what is known about the incubation period of the smallpox virus - and here Shooter's conclusion begins to fall down.
The incubation period is the time between when someone contracts the disease and first begins to show symptoms.
Modern day virologists agree that smallpox incubates in its victims anytime between seven and 17 days before the infected person begins to feel ill.
The gap between Tuesday, July 25 and Friday, August 11 is 18 days.
That puts Parker outside the outer range of what is accepted as smallpox's incubation period by one day - and that could be significant.
For the virus could only survive for a few hours unless it found an accommodating host.
So that would appear to rule out the air duct theory which Shooter thought the most likely route of transmission.
And it is also unlikely that, to use Mr Escott-Cox's phrase "Mrs Parker went to the smallpox" on that date - July 25 - for she was simply too busy making her telephone orders.
However, new evidence shows Abid was also handled on a different date.
Buried away in the Shooter report, is a note that Abid was also handled in the Birmingham pox lab on Friday, July 28 along with another potentially fatal strain of smallpox called Jumma.
A note shows that work on that date involved harvesting the tissue cultures which had been infected both with Abid and Jumma three days earlier, on Tuesday, July 25.
If Parker contracted the disease on this date - Friday 28th as opposed to Tuesday 25th - it meant that by the time she started to feel ill and show the first symptoms, on Friday, August 11, 15 days had passed.
And that places her well within the recognised outer limit of 17 days for incubating the devastating disease.
But why should she be exposed to the strain on Friday, July 28, when she had no reason to head anywhere near the highly restricted lab, which was not part of her department? Again, it is the date which is very significant, for that was the day many staff were breaking up for their summer holidays.
It appears that Parker may have needed to catch up with several of them and not simply to wish them a happy holiday.
She is thought to have been in the habit of supplying some of her friends and colleagues with film and camera equipment, using her business contacts to obtain the goods at cost price. There is no suggestion that she was doing anything wrong or illegal, she was merely doing them a good turn.
These were pre-digital days. Most photographs were taken on holidays and most people relied on traditional film so they needed to stock up before heading away on their hard-earned breaks.
Mr Escott-Cox said: "There were some rumours circulating at the time - and I emphasise that they were only rumours - that Janet Parker used to visit her colleagues in the medical school at about this time of year as she was a photographer and was able to supply them with any photographic needs they might need for their summer holidays.
"Whether that might possibly have led her to tap on the outer laboratory door or do anything of the sort is pure speculation and it is speculation of a route down which I am not going to go.
"But I emphasise that even the question of her visiting colleagues and the photographic materials was based only on rumour gathered, circulating in the medical school at the time of her death.
"Nobody ever came forward and supported that with a statement of any description."
The mystery of how Parker came to be infected is unlikely to ever be solved conclusively.
Her final days were spent at a smallpox isolation hospital at Catherine-de-Barnes, near Solihull.
Smallpox did not always kill, but she had the worst sort, variola major, and doctors lost their battle to save her life on September 11, 1978.
Her father, Fred Witcomb, died in the same hospital shortly before her from a suspected heart attack.
He had been admitted after feeling unwell.
Her mother, Hilda, contracted smallpox but the infection was caught early and she survived.
More than 300 people across the city were confined to their homes under quarantine for up to a fortnight. Thousands were vaccinated.
But the outbreak was contained. There were no further cases, and there have been none since.
Mr Escott-Cox met Parker on several occasions in the courts in Birmingham when she worked as a police photographer and gave evidence in various cases.
He said: "She was a very, very nice lady and so, although not knowing her as a friend, knowing her as a sort of professional acquaintance, the knowledge that it was her who died of smallpox, that it was someone you had actually known and spoken to as a very, very unpleasant shock.
"Her colleagues must have been absolutely devastated by what hap> pened."
Airborne infection of smallpox cannot take place other than between two people who are face to faceBarrister Brian Escott-Cox QC
CAPTION(S):
Prof Henry Bedson, who was one of the world's leading virologists, later took his own life. Right, the University of Birmingham Medical School, in Edgbaston
<B Janet Parker's home in Kings Norton, and left, coverage from the time of the tragedy
University of Birmingham Medical School photographer Janet Parker was the last person to die from smallpox - but mystery still surrounds the case
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| Publication: | The Birmingham Post (England) |
|---|---|
| Geographic Code: | 4EUUK |
| Date: | Apr 19, 2018 |
| Words: | 1639 |
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