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29
REPORT
on the
SANITARY CONDITION OF ST. MARY, ISLINGTON,
FOR OCTOBER, 1862.
No. LXYII.
The population of Islington has again passed through a comparatively
healthy month. Judging by the experience of the last six years, the mortality
which was to be expected for the month of October was 216. The actual number
of deaths was 205.
The zymotic mortality was comparatively low, and would have been still
lower had it not been that scarlet fever had become rekindled in certain parts of
the parish, producing 17 deaths. Still, during the last four years the mortality
in October, from this disease, was 25, 27, 27, 28, Compared with last month,
however, the disease appears to have been progressing, the number of cases
attended by the parochial surgeons and the two dispensaries being 48 against 33
in the five weeks of September. The weekly mortality was 3, 7, 4, 2; it took
place almost solely in Canal, Bemerton, Lower Boad, and Rotherfield Sanitary
Districts. Measles have also shown a tendency to increase; the books of the
parochial surgeons indicate the Queen's-road, Kingsland, and "White Conduit
Districts as those where it has principally prevailed. One of the deaths from
typhus was of a head nurse at the Fever Hospital, which is still crowded with
patients. In the presence of such an epidemic, which has now lasted for a year,
and the certainty of the distress in the North, which has already favoured an
outbreak at Preston, being not unfelt in all the great centres of population,
especially should the coming winter prove a severe one, we must not be astonished
should we hear more than wc have even yet done of this disease in London
wherever the poor are crowded together.