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such causes: fifty deaths only are recorded. It is not to be forgotten that when
epidemics are more rife than usual, the weakly children will be cut off by these,
instead of lingering on and dying a little later, from the inherent defects in their
constitutions. The sadly high number of twelve women died in child-bed. Old age
appears as the only cause of death in 62 cases, 44 being the calculated number. For
reasons that have before been dwelt on, I cannot be sure that their satisfactory excess
of longevity is altogether real.
Violent deaths are recorded in forty-five instances during the year, twelve
such deaths occurring in the neighbouring hospitals. As would be expected from
the occupations and character of our lower population, St. Giles's district contributes
more than its share to this class of deaths. Five of the forty-five were suicides, all
men. Fourteen children met their death by suffocation, an "accident" of so frequent
occurrence in our district, that the culpability of the negligence which leads to it is
scarcely recognized.
Chapter IV.— Localization of Disease and Death in 1859.
Enquiring more particularly into the causes of the mortality, and regarding
especially those diseases which may be called, in a manner, the peculiar diseases of
St. Giles's, I shall pursue the same course as in previous years, distributing the
deaths into subdivisions smaller than the three registration sub-districts. A few
remarks, however, on the gross mortality of these sub-districts will perhaps be
interesting.
The deaths from all causes among Bloomsbury parishioners numbered 317,
of which 164 were in males, and 153 females. Eleven of these persons, however,
expired in various hospitals, and seven within a short period of their admission into
the parish infirmary ; so that 299 deaths only were returned by the registrar of this
sub-district. (See table of registered deaths, No. V. of Appendix.)— In St. Giles,
South, 699 deaths were registered, 353 males and 346 females. Subtracting fiftyone
deaths among persons recently admitted into the infirmary from the other two
sub-districts, but on the other hand including 33 residents of St. Giles, South, who
died in hospitals, the corrected mortality of this sub-district becomes 681. This
includes the deaths of 109 inmates of the workhouse, as welj as of sixty-six persons
who migrated fiom various parts of the sub-district into the infirmary a short time
before their death.— St. Giles, North, lost 417 of its inhabitants (221 males and
196 females), the registered moitality being 343, to which we must add thirty deaths
in hospitals and forty-four iu the workhouse.

Bloomsbury, then, has been more healthy than in 1858, and St. Giles's North has
has made great and steady progress towards a better standard; but St. Giles's South
has retrograded materially from the improved condition which it appeared to have
assumed in 1858. Still it has not gone back altogether, for its mortality remains
less, by 16 per ten thousand, than in 1857.