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game account for the four quarters of the year in the fourth of the appended tables.
To these the reader is referred for further particulars as to the mortality of London
at large.
Chapter II.— On the Mortality of St. Giles's District, from, all Causes, in 1860.
Fourteen hundred and nineteen deaths occurred in this year among persons
belonging to the district of St. Giles's. This number is five greater than in 1859,
and seventeen greater than in 1858. It is, however, less by a hundred and thirtytwo
than the deaths of 1857, when the death-rate was the same as had prevailed in
St. Giles's for the ten years preceding. Within a very small limit, therefore, the
improvement of the previous two years was maintained in 1860.
The 1419 deaths were not ail returned by the local registrars. Eighty-two of
them were registered in other parishes, among the patients of various hospitals who
had resided in St. Giles's immediately before their admission. The deaths returned
by the registrars of our own district numbered 1346, but from these a deduction of
nine must be made for duplicate entries.
According to the ordinary law of mortality, the majority of those who died in
1860 were of the male sex, the total being made up of 742 males and 677 females.
The hospitals, where accident and exposure are often the direct reason for admission,
show the preponderance of male deaths still more markedly, forty-eight of the
deaths in hospitals being of males, thirty-four among females. The compensating
law of births that more children are bom of the male than of the female sex, was
also illustrated in St. Giles's last year. The former numbered 926, the latter 852.
Of the 1419 deaths, 449 or 32 per cent, were of children under two years of
age : and 141 others, giving a sum of 590 or 42 per cent, of the total deaths, died
before reaching their fifth birthday. These numbers, large as they are, are somewhat
below those of previous years ; probably in consequence of the infrequency
of zymotic diseases in 1860. The age of those who died from each disease, and
from each class of disease, are given at length in the third of my appended Tables.
In the first quarter of the year, 417 deaths occurred, 215 males and 202
females ; in the second quarter 336 deaths, 179 males and 157 females; in the
third quarter 288, males and females in equal number; and in the last quarter 378
deaths, 204 males and 174 females. The very small proportion contributed by the
third quarter of the year, owing to the absence of diarrhoea, is here to be noticed.
The cold quarters, for the reason before pointed out, are even more conspicuously
than usual in excess of the rest of the year in their mortality.
The deaths from all causes in 1860 represent a death-rate for St. Giles's district
of 26'2 in the thousand. This is as usual considerably above the death-rate of the
town at large, which we have seen was 22'4 in this year. Of the districts which
immediately surround our own, we find that the rate of mortality of St. Pancras and
Marylebone were 20'8 and 22'7 respectively. Of course we do not expect St.
Giles's to compare favourably with districts that hare so many more natural and
social advantages. But with the neighbouring districts which more nearly resemble
our own, we continue as in former years to contrast disadvantageously. The deathrates
of Holborn 23"8, of the Strand 23*1, and of St. Martins 22"8 per thousand, are
greatly below that of St. Giles's. Each year these districts have been found much
healthier than our own, and though the sanitary progress of St. Giles's has been as
decided as of any of them, we are still very far from having attained to their
standard of health.
The Table on the preceding page gives the actual deaths and the death-rate of
our own district and of our neighbours for each quarter of the year. Correction is
made in each district for the hospitals it contains and for the deaths of its inhabitants
occurring in the public institutions of other districts. It will be seen, among other