From one person with smallpox...

[Pam Downes]

....to a total of 1500 cases, in one small area. With such ease.
http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/ENG-LINCSGEN/2006-07/1152964330
Pam

[busyglen]

You can certainly see how easily this disease spread, especially in crowded areas. It didn't take much, did it? There was an outbreak in the area where I live, but the numbers who died were not on this scale. It's sad reading the PRs with notations of `died of Smallpox'.

Glenys

[joette]

I was looking at the Death Registers for Newton Parish in Ayr & noticed with annual regularity the outbreak of Smallpox.The numbers were not huge but I am not certain of the population nos during those years so perhaps it was a large number for the size of the Parish.I am assuming as this is a seaside resort that the infection came via the port.
I also noted several deaths from "chin cough" & thought this was a very graphic description of what I presumed to be Whooping Cough.

[Barbara Tidy]

I have a list of all the people buried in the Joyce Green cementry for Smallpox in Dartford. Most of these came from London and died on the hospital ships that were moored at Long Reach.

They were buried with up to 14 bodies in one grave.

Barbara

[Mutley]

I was tracking back a family line and found they just disappeared, I could not figure out what had happened to them.

I then searched for information about the village only to find out that it had virtually been destroyed by smallpox.

Only one of the line I was following survived to pop up in another village nearby.

It is always worth looking at what happened in an area when you suddenly lose a family you are researching.

P.S. Barbara, my mum was a nurse in Joyce Green but I would hope long after the period you refer to :)
Not far down the road is Gravesend where the London plague victims burials ended.