Small Pox in Sydney: Police Precautions in Bellevue-Street.

At 2.50am on 29 April 1881, the steamship Brisbane under the command of Captain J Beddell, arrived in Port Jackson from Hong Kong. On 25 May, three weeks after the Brisbane’s arrival, Dr Haynes G Alleyne, chief health officer and head of Sydney’s quarantine service, was notified of a possible case of smallpox. The infant daughter of On Chong, a Chinese merchant from Lower George Street, had come down with fever and a rash, prompting a call to a local doctor. Three weeks after the On Chong case was notified for investigation, Dr Michael Clune from College Street, near Hyde Park, was asked to visit Edward Rout who lived nearby in Surry Hills. From the description Clune suspected smallpox. Next morning, Tuesday 24 June, he went to the terrace in Bellevue Street where Rout and his wife ran a lodging house. Clune was met at the door by Mrs Rout who led him upstairs to a tiny attic. As they climbed the narrow stairs Clune was almost overcome by the fetid smell, one he recognised from his training in Dublin. He didn’t go inside the attic but stood in the doorway. There by the light of a hand-held lamp he could see Edward Rout’s half-naked body. It was covered with pustules. The man was clearly dying from smallpox in its most virulent form. There was little Clune could do for him. source http://www.dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/smallpox_epidemic_1881