High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Janet Parker (March 1938 – September 11, 1978) was the last person to die from smallpox. She was born in Birmingham, UK, and was a medical photographer who worked in the Anatomy Department of the University of Birmingham Medical School. Parker died after being accidentally exposed to a strain of smallpox virus that was grown in a research laboratory, on the floor below the Anatomy Department. The event led to the suicide of Professor Henry Bedson, the then Head of the Microbiology Department.