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If the death.rate of seventeen per thousand, which is assumed to be the
normal mortality for a town, had prevailed in St. Giles's we should have saved 488
lives out of the 1414 who died in the year. If we had been as healthy as London
as a whole, we should have numbered 259 fewer deaths. Or if we had only reached
the standard now attained by our neighbour, the Holborn district, 152 persons who
died in 1859 wouid still have been alive.
The following table will show that other districts have fluctuated more
than our own between 1858 and 1859; the large parishes of St. Pancras and
Marylebone exhibiting the same alteration in their death.rate that has been
noted for the Metropolis as a whole, becoming more healthy in 1859. Among
the districts that are more directly comparable with our own, the Strand, St
Martin's, and Holborn, we see from the table that the two former have deteriorated,
while the last has made a considerable advance from its standard of
1858. St. Giles's, therefore, in its stationary position, does not compare very disadvantageously
with the progress of its neighbours, especially when we remember
the alternations of excess and deficiency that are apt to be exhibited by certain
of the fatal diseases of a community.

Chapter III.— Causes of death in St. Giles's, in 1859.
In the subjoined scheme, I have compared the mortality from various causes,
in London and in St. Giles's, estimating the number of deaths that would have fallen
to our share if the same death.rate from each disease had prevailed in St. Giles's as
in the town at large. More accurate detail as to the causes of our own mortality
is of considerable interest to the medical enquirer, and is furnished at length in a
table of the Appendix. From this Table (No. III.) may be learnt what are the
diseases comprised in the several classes and orders mentioned in the following
page. It will here be sufficient to consider at large those diseases only which
have been unduly rife in our own district.
With reference to the quota which has been adopted for the St. Giles's
of 1-51.1 of the Metropolitan mortality, it may be well to remark that the estimate
of this population varies from year to vetir. On the assumption that our own
numbers have undergone no material variation, while the annual increase of London
has been as 47 to 48, the population of residents in St. Giles's district to the whole
population of the town was in 1857 as 1:49 1—in 1858 it was as 1:50.1—
and in 1859 it is represented by the figure here adopted.