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11
Of the localities that make up South St. Giles I have unhappily to render a different
account. With the single exception of the Lincoln's Inn neighbourhood,
they have all deteriorated. The two localities marked G and H on my diagram,
extending from Little Queen-street to St. Andrew's-street, and lying between
Holborn and Broad-street on the north, and Great Queen-street and Castle-street
on the south, occupy in 1859 a medium position as to healthiness between that
which they held in 1858 and 1859. But the district to the south of Great Queenstreet,
which had before been healthier than the parts just named, rose in 1859
almost to a par with them in point of mortality. The rise, it will presently be seen,
was exclusively from the prevalence of zymotic disorders; in regard of these, indeed,
this neighbourhood has been pre-eminent over all other parts of St. Giles's.
The rise in the death-rate of the adjacent Strand district, which was also in some
measure from an increase in these same diseases, is a fact which may here be usefully
recalled to mind. But the increase of mortality in this locality, about Great
Wild-street, is at first sight the less to be expected, as, during the whole of 1859,
Lincoln-court stood emptied of its six or seven hundred inhabitants. It appears
very doubtful, however, whether the population was diminished by this number: it
is even likely that the families who left Lincoln-court only added to the already
crowded tenements in the immediate neighbourhood. Of such extra-crowding I
have, indeed, no proof; but if it did occur, one can easily see that an effect opposite
to our anticipations might be produced on the health of the locality by the closure
of Lincoln-court.
The mortality among children has so closely the same distribution as the
mortality at other ages, that I need not comment on it in detail. The following
table gives the order of the ten subdivisions of St. Giles's in this respect. In it
the improvement about Church-lane, and the change for the worse in the southern
parts about Great Wild-street, are strongly marked :—

I have already anticipated some of the facts that are shown on the next table.
Here is given the mortality from each chief zymotic disease in the ten subdivisions
of our district, and here is shown how these ten localities arranged themselves in
1859, in respect to the prevalence of these diseases as a class :—
* Deaths among newly-born children, whose mothers enter the workhouse immediately
before their confinement, are referrred to the previous habitation of the mother.