View report page

2
ascertain the localities and special forms of the prevalent diseases, as well as the
sexes and ages of those who fall victims to them. Information on these facts
is absolutely necessary in order to be in a position to comply with the Act of
Parliament, or to make suggestions to improve the health of the District.
The Treasury has recently adopted, as a measure of economy, a resolution
to discontinue the gratuitous distribution of all documents printed by the
Government; the Registrar General has, however, prevailed on their Lordships
to make a special exception in favour of the Medical Officers of Health, who are
again furnished gratuitously with copies of his weekly return. These also are
very valuable, as they enable one to compare the mortality of one's own district
with that of other districts of the Metropolis.
Some of the information obtained from a careful analysis of these two
sets of documents, I proceed now to lay before you.
The deaths registered in St. Pancras, as occurring during the year 1858,
numbered 4509, besides 140 deaths in the Strand Union Workhouse, which do
not fairly belong to this parish. Under this number are included deaths in the
University College and Royal Free Hospitals of persons who had recently come
from other districts ; but those are excluded who left this parish to go to hospitals
situated in other districts, where they died soon afterwards. I have found,
however, from two previous years that these two numbers so nearly balance each
other, that for all practical purposes there is no advantage to be gained by taking
them into account so as to correct the total number.
The death-rate, that is to say, the number who died in proportion to the
number living during the period was, per hundred thousand, 2312, or a little
above 23 persons for every thousand, or one person died out of 43 living. This
rate is calculated on the assumption that the population of Saint Pancras in the
middle of the year was 195,000, an estimate which is probably a little below the
actual population.
In 1857, the rate of mortality was only a little over 20 per thousand. In
the whole Metropolis during 1858, the death-rate was 2356 per hundred thousand,
a little higher than that of St. Pancras; in 1857 it was as much as 2
per thousand higher in London than in St. Pancras. The death-rate in the
northern districts of the Metropolis, which include Marylebone, Hampstead,
Islington, Hackney, and Pancras, was only 2248 in 1858, that is lower than the
rate of this Parish ; whilst in 1857, St. Pancras mortality was lower than that
of the districts by which it is surrounded.
The deaths which occurred last year in the parish, above the rate of 17 per
thousand (which is a rate we may fairly hope to attain to), numbered no fewer
than eleven hundred and ninety; that is to say, nearly twelve hundred deaths were
due to causes which may be prevented by sanitary improvements. This is a statement
founded on remarks made by the Registrar General and deduced from his very
extended experience concerning the mortality of different places under varying
conditions. To every death we may safely assume that there are more than 30
cases of illness. This assumption will give 36,000 cases of preventible disease
during the year: such disease has not only disabled for the time, and, in many
cases, cut off the means of livelihood, but has frequently left shattered constitutions,
and sown the seeds of future illness, and premature death. Of the
causes of pauperism, none are so common as disease and death; so that by
diminishing the latter, a decrease of the former must be effected.
The death-rates in the different parts of the Parish have been different, a
circumstance observed in my former Reports. In the several sub-districts, the
estimated death-rate per ten thousand has been,—in Regent's Park 233, in