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5
bourhig parishes; the distribution of these cases in the several metropolitan hospitals, is
shown in the Appendix, Table II. Adding these 71 deaths to (he total registered
mortality, it appears that the actual number of St. Giles's residents who died within
the year was 1402. For certain purposes of comparison, the registered deaths must
be taken; but wherever it is possible, the corrected number 1402 will be adopted.
This number represents a death-rate in the population of St. Giles of 25.8 in
the thousand, or 258 per ten thousand, living. Of the 1402 deaths, 700 were in
females, and 702' in males, the preponderance in males being to a much less degree
than is ordinarily witnessed.
The ages of the 1402 persons averaged twenty-seven-and-a-quarter years, at
the period of death. 138 infants died before they were three months old, and 165
others below the age of one year; the total mortality under two years was 450, and
under five years, 603. These deaths among children, though much more numerous
than in the average of the town, form a smaller proportion of thei total mortality than
in the preceding year. Thus, of a thousand persons who died in St. Giles's in 1858,
821 were below the age of two, and 430 below five years of age, the corresponding
numbers for 1857 being 360 and 477.
The average ago at death of those who had passed their fifth year, was something
under forty-seven years. Six persons are recorded to have passed their ninetieth
year at the time of their death, and three of them were upwards of ninety-five. Four
out of these six old persons were females.
The ages at which deaths occurred are shown at more detail in the third Table
of the Appendix, along with the diseases which produced the fatal result at each age.
The 1402 deaths were distributed over the four quarters of the year thus:—
the first quarter showed 399, and the second 312 deaths; while, in the September
quarter, there were 302, and in the December quarter, 389 deaths.
In my last Annual Report, for 1857, I compiled, with some care, a table of
comparison between the gross mortality of St. Giles's, and that of the districts surrounding
it, and of the metropolis generally. Having made allowance for all
artificial disturbing influences, I found the result was strikingly unfavourable to St.
Giles's. I have made a similar table for the year 1858. (See next page.)
In one point of view, the comparison on this table is still unfavourable to St.
Giles's, for this district continues to present a higher death-rate than any of those
among which we should expect it to rank, upon consideration of its natural and social
features. Its death-rate is still higher than that of Holborn, and is considerably
greater than in the Strand or St. Martin's. But in another point of view, the figures
of these tables are extremely gratifying:—
London, it has been shown, was less healthy in 1858 than in 1857. In the
last column of the above table, the increase in mortality is represented by the number
13½ in the 10,000; the rise in Marylebone, on the same population, was 6.7; in
Holborn it was 11.3; and in St. Pancras it reached to as many as 28 in the 10,000.
On the other hand, so far from participating in the increase of mortality, the
Strand, St. Martin's, and St. Giles's show an actual fall in the death-rate, and that to
a very considerable extent. This fall is represented in the first district by 13, in St.
Martin's by 24½, and in St. Giles's by 22½ in the 10,000.