Smallpox death 40 years on
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-deBarnes, 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 absolutely devastated by pened.” have what been hap-