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Chapter IV.—Localization of Disease and Death in St. Giles's, in 1860.
For the Officer of Health this is still the most important portion of our statistical
enquiry. It indicates to him the neighbourhoods which stand in most need of
sanitary improvement, and affords him important information as to the causation of
disease. It has been customary in these Reports to consider first the three registration
sub-districts, and then to follow out the investigation in a manner more available
for practical purposes, by the use of smaller and more natural sub-divisions of the
district. This course will still be adopted. It will not be profitable, however, at
the present moment, to enter into an estimate of the death-rate of each of these
smaller sub-divisions with the same detail that has before been found so advantageous.
To compute the mortality per thousand on the basis of an old census, when the
returns of the new one will shortly be forthcoming, would be labour of little
worth.
Of the registration sub-districts, the population at the recent census is already
published. The numbers in the three districts along with an estimate of their
population in the three preceding years, more exact than has been heretofore possible,
are appended to this Report (No. VII.) We have, therefore, the data for an
accurate calculation of the death-rate of 1860, as well as for making some corrections
in our reckonings of former years.
The aggregate mortality of persons resident in the parish of Bloomsbury was
320. This number includes fourteen who died in hospitals, and nineteen who died
within a few weeks of their admission from Bloomsbury into the workhouse. The
deaths of this sub-district returned by the Registrar were 287 (144 males and
143 females)—St. Giles's South, lost by death 674 of its residents in the year.
Seven hundred and ten were registered, but from this number must be subtracted
severity-nine residents of the other two sub-districts who died in the workhouse
shortly after their admission; and on the other hand we have to add forty-three for
residents in St. Giles's South, who died in various hospitals. The males and females
who made up the registered number of deaths, were 378 and 332 respectively.
The corrected total, 674, is composed of 501 residents of the sub-district, who died
at their own homes, 108 of them who died soon after their admission into the workhouse,
together with sixty-five persons who died in the workhouse after a protracted
residence there.—St. Giles's North, which is, both in its population and in its
habitual death-rate, intermediate between the other two sub-districts, had 425 deaths,
340 being returned by the Registrar (172 males and 168 females), twenty-five
others occurring in hospitals and sixty in the workhouse.
The death-rates represented by these figures, computed upon the population,
stated in Appendix VII., are:—For Bloomsbury 185 per ten thousand; for St.
Giles's South, 346, and for St. Giles's North, 247, in the same number of residents.
In these figures the first matter for remark is that they are practically identical with
the corresponding results for 1859, after correction made in the latter year for our
better knowledge of the population. A comparison of the four past years is given
in the following scheme:—*

* Several differences will be found between these figures and those in the Table given in last year's Report.
This is owing to the population of each sub-district having been newly calculated for each year. Correction
has been made, as before, for the extra length of the year 1857.