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10
Exchanging now the three registration subilistricts for the ten localities employed
in former reports, I shall refer to the appended diagram for a statement of
their boundaries, area, density of population, and other preliminary facts. These
ten subdivisions of St. Giles's stand in the following order in their general
healthiness during 1859: the number of deaths from all causes determining
their sequence. Comparison is here made with the corresponding data for 1857
and 1858.

Here the parts about Russell-square maintain their character for being the
healthiest of our district. This neighbourhood has had for the last three years an
average mortality of 13 6 only per thousand. It is assumed by sanitary statisticians
that 17 per thousand is the inevitable death-rate of a town population.
Surely the standard is fixed too high, if a mixed community of nearly four thousand
persons in the centre of London incur no higher mortality than 13^ per thousand
annually. The remaining parts of Bloomsbury taken together, though they include
a very large number of dirty streets and mews, and closed courts inhabited by a
very poor population, have for the last three years had a death-rate under twenty
per thousand. Each of the localities which make up the northern subdistrict of St.
Giles's shows a certain reduction in its aggregate mortality. Even the Dudleystreet
quarter is a trifle healthier than in 1858, when it had improved so much on
the preceding year. But in none of my divisions is the advance so striking as ir;
that which includes Church-lane. In 1857 and 1858 the deaths here were steady
at 281 and 283 per thousand; in 1859 they sank to 222, It will presently be seen
that this amendment has affected all the diseases which are most characteristic of
St. Giles'; that fewer children have died, that there has been less zymotic mortality,
that consumption and lung diseases have had fewer victims. In Church-lane and
its courts alone, the actual deaths of 1859 were but twenty-nine against forty-eight
in the year that went before. Who can doubt the cause ? In 1858 and the beginning
of 1859 vigorous steps were taken to improve this locality, by securing better
ventilation to the houses and rooms, cleaner privies and ampler water-supply: overcrowding
was carefully prevented. One of the courts most affected by these
measures was Kennedy-court. In 1858 six people died here, two from fever, one
from erysipelas, another from consumption, and two were children under two years
of age. In 1859 there was not a single death. In 1858 thirteen people from
Church-lane and its purlieus died in the workhouse; in 1859, five only. Who will
calculate for the economist the money-value of these sanitary measures ?