View report page

4
all the districts with which this Report will have to deal, our new knowledge shows
that the population has been similarly overestimated. Of the parishes immediately
surrounding St. Giles's, we now find that. St. Pancras is the only one in which there
has been much increase, (1.313 per cent, annually). Marylebone numbers in 1861,
a bare four thousand more than in 1851, being an increase of only 0.299 per cent,
yearly. Our other neighbouring districts, the Strand, Holborn, and St. Martin's,
have not only not increased as heretofore in population, but have followed St. Giles's
in showing an actual and material diminution in their numbers. St. Giles's itself
shows, in 1861, a continuance of the decrease that was observed between 1841 and
1851, the population at the recent census being 53,981 against 54,214 in 1851.
Knowing the rate of increase or decrease between the two last censuses, the population
of each district for each of the few past years may be now accurately ascertained.
It has been calculated in the present Report, not only for the year 1860, but also
for several preceding years, and thus the statistical results of former reports are in
some cases modified. The first three columns of the Table on the opposite page, and
the Table VII. in the Appendix, relating to our own sub-districts, embody the chief
results of the census with which we are at present concerned.
The 61,821 deaths from all causes in London in 1860, represent a death-rate
of 22-41 per thousand. Taking the death-rate as our index, the year may be
regarded as healthy up to the average. It was, within a trifle, as healthy as 1859
or 1857, and a good deal healthier than 1858.
The cold and wetness of the year 1860 were very remarkable, and these conditions
exercised a notable influence over the nature of the diseases which were
prevalent. Thus the zymotic class of diseases caused fewer deaths than in any one
of the twelve preceding years, despite of increasing population. The great cause of
these diseases—impurity of the air arising from putrefying organic matters—was, to
a large extent, got rid of by the abundance of wet. The town was in fact better
washed. The diseases of the zymotic class that depend most directly upon such
atmospheric impurity, are probably diarrhoea and continued fever. These were precisely
the diseases whose mortality was most remarkably below the average. Diarrhoea particularly,
was not fatal to half its ordinary extent. Scarlet fever, which had been
very prevalent in London in the two previous years, also received a decided check
in 1860. Small-pox was less fatal than in 1859, the epidemic form of that year
having gradually disappeared through the four quarters of 1860. Measles, however,
and whooping cough, the former especially, have been in some excess over preceding
years. In some parts of the town, measles assumed an epidemic character in the
last quarter of the year. It is probable that 480 deaths from diphtheritis were
more than have occurred in former years, but the returns of the Registrar-General
have not distinguished this disorder before the year 1860. With these exceptions,
then, every important member of the zymotic class of diseases was below its average
fatality in the metropolis.
On the other hand, the cold and wet of 1860, are chargeable with an increase in
the mortality from other classes of disorders. Diseases'of the respiratory organs caused
more deaths than in any of the twelve preceding years, and three thousand more
than in 1859. Consumptive diseases, though scarcely more fatal than in 1859,
were also much above the average. Diseases of the nervous system, of the heart,
and of the kidneys, were also in conspicuous excess in their mortality over that of
former veais. This excess is no doubt to be ascribed to the same climatic peculiarities
of the year, as these have an acknowledged power of causing such diseases,
and of bringing them to their fatal issue.
The distribution of the total mortality over the five main sub-divisions of
London, appears to have observed about the samp rule as in previous years. It is
shown in the first Table of the Appendix. A detailed account of the causes of
death of the 61,821 persons who died in 1860, will be found on page 26, and the