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REPORT
on the
SANITARY CONDITION OF ST. MARY, ISLINGTON
FOR AUGUST, 1870.
No. CLXXX.
The registered mortality for August, namely 360 deaths, is unquestionably
high for the season—that from diseases of the "miasmatic"
class especially so. The latter includes 30 deaths from scarlet fever,
23 from continued fever, chiefly typhoid, and 89 bowel affections. The
records of public sickness which I tabulate indicate no increase of
sickness in the bulk since July, and a total amount of 2939 cases of all
kinds, which cannot be regarded as above the average of the season.
The table, however, shows an increase of new cases of scarlet fever
from 36 to 66 in four weeks, a moderate increase in cases of diarrhoea,
and above all that the new cases of continued fever have been doubled
in the course of the month. In my last Report I mentioned the occurrence
of an outbreak of typhoid in one district of the Parish, which
may be roughly defined as extending on both sides of the Holloway
Road, from a little to the south of the North London Railway to
Hornsey Eoad. Other parts of the Parish have suffered, but not to
such an extent. Most of the cases I have on record occurred in
respectable families, and were attended by private practitioners.
Hence there has been often delay in the transmission of information
to our office, and difficulties have arisen in tracing the mode in which
the disease has spread. There have been various speculations as to the
cause localizing the fever. It may suffice to say, for the present, that
in the premises where the earliest cases occurred, we found on investigation,
various faults in drainage or old and defective brick drains and
cesspools, through which soakage into the soil readily occurred, and in
nearly all the houses the waste-pipe of the cistern either communicated
with the house drain or with some part of the water closet system. The
greater part of the scarlet fever cases happened in the western part of
the Parish.