for Solihull funeral director Bastocks and later for the BBC at Pebble Mill, recalled that he was told that authorities would not allow the body to be stored in a fridge in case the virus managed to multiply: Concerns over the survival of infectious virus in Parker's body were well-founded, and at the inquest the coroner, who signed Parker's cremation certificate, disallowed an autopsy for safety reasons. Quarantine and containment Many people had close contact with Parker before she was admitted to hospital. The outbreak prevention response included 260 people being immediately quarantined, several of them at Catherine-de-Barnes Hospital, including the ambulance driver who transported Parker. Over 500 people who had been (or had possibly been) in contact with Parker were given vaccinations against smallpox. On 26 August, health officials went to Parker's house in Burford Park Road, Kings Norton, and fumigated her home and car. On 28 August, five hundred people were placed in quarantine in their homes for two weeks. Parker's mother contracted smallpox on 7 September, despite having been vaccinated against the disease on 24 August. Her case was described as "very minor" and she was subsequently declared free from infection and was discharged from hospital on 22 September. Other than Parker's mother, no further cases occurred. The other close contacts, which included two biomedical scientists from the Regional Virus Laboratory, were released from quarantine in Catherine-de-Barnes on 10 October 1978. Birmingham was declared officially free of smallpox on 16 October 1978. Over a year later, in October 1979, the university authorities fumigated the Medical School East Wing. The ward at Catherine-de-Barnes Hospital in which Parker had died was still sealed off five years after her death, all the furniture and equipment inside left untouched. Related deaths On 5 September 1978, Parker's 71-year-old father, Frederick Witcomb, of Myrtle Avenue, Kings Heath, died while in quarantine at Catherine-de-Barnes Hospital. He appeared to have died following a cardiac arrest when visiting his daughter. No post-mortem was carried out on his body because of the risk of smallpox infection. On 6 September 1978, Henry Bedson, head of the Birmingham Medical School microbiology department, committed suicide while in quarantine at his home in Cockthorpe Close, Harborne. He cut his throat in the garden shed and died at Birmingham Accident Hospital a few days later. His suicide note read: In Bedson's Munk's Roll biography published by the Royal College of Physicians, virologist