Medicine: Death at the Hearth

With coal running scarce in Britain last fall, the housewives of Canklow village in Yorkshire were delighted when a junk dealer showed up hawking a pile of old auto battery cases. The vulcanite cases were certainly a bargain—only a shilling a sackful—and they blazed warmly in open grates.

Just before Christmas, a wave of mysterious illness struck Canklow’s children, caused headaches, jaundice and anemia! Twenty-five children were rushed to hospitals, dozens more were treated at home. On Christmas Eve, doctors took 200 blood tests, diagnosed the plague as lead poisoning. Then they checked back, learned that every stricken child came from a house where the battery cases had been used for fuel.

Investigating health officers recalled that two small boys, Leonard Barraclough, 5, and James Bailey, 2, overlooked in the early panic, had mysteriously died right at its onset. Their respective causes of death had been reported as infectious hepatitis and epilepsy, but autopsies showed that they had actually died from lead poisoning. Finally, health officers solved the mystery: each pound of casing still contained a tenth of an ounce of lead, and the children had been breathing the lead fumes around the fireside.

At the inquest last week, the jury listened to the story of Leonard and James and the housewives’ bargain, then issued its verdict: death by misadventure.