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the population. By ensuring that the cause of death shall be well ascertained
in every case—we obtain more certain knowledge to apply to the prevention
and alleviation of disease. We also exercise a most important influence in
restraining and detecting death from unfair means.
A very little alteration of the registration laws would suffice to extend
the present practice of registering causes of death to every instance where
certificates are now deficient. Such an amendment cannot be deemed impossible
when actual practice has advanced already to the desired point in 97 per
cent. of deaths. In some districts indeed, what is here contended for is
actually observed as a rule; civil registrations being refused in any case where
the cause of death is obscure, until the coroner has been communicated with.
Although this practice appears of doubtful legality, no inconveniences are
known to be produced by its operation.
Since this subject was first brought under notice in these reports, the
Metropolitan Association of Medical Officers of Health has given careful attention
to it, and have pressed the views that are here advocated upon the
attention of the Registrar General. Similar opinions have been published
recently by the Coroner for Central Middlesex, whose experience shows that
facility to crime is undoubtedly afforded by the present system of interring
bodies without sufficient evidence of the way in which death was produced.
Memorials to the Home Secretary have been presented by most of the District
Boards of London, and first by that of St. Giles's, advocating an improvement
of the laws in this respect. And public attention is being called by the
public press to the need of further provision for the safety of life.
SECTION VII.—On the Sanitary Work of 1863.
By the following tabular statement it appears that the usual amount
of house inspection was performed in St Giles's in 1863. The poorer streets
of the district, and those where zymotic disease was most prevalent, have been
the objects of special care. In the presence of epidemic typhus much attention
has been given to promote cleanliness and ventilation, and to reduce overcrowding
in the Southern parts of St. Giles. The table does not indeed show
the full amount of work that has been done in the last direction. With every
notice for the abatement of other unwholesome conditions, aud upon every
available opportunity, warning has been given to the owners of house property
of the determination of the Board to prevent overcrowding. The five instances
notedin the table refer only to cases where further proceedings were
commenced for the protection of the public health in this respect. In the case
of one overcrowded house, the owner was summoned, and the decision of the
Magistrate at Bow Street upheld the view of the Board that 400 cubic feet
of air were essential to the health of every adult inmate. It is probably to
care upon this point that the reduction of the zymotic mortality of St. Giles's
is mainly to be ascribed. The precautions as to space which the legislature
has provided in Common Lodging Houses require especially to be extended to
poor houses occupied by a family in every room, (and which do not fall under
the technical definition of Common Lodging Houses) at a time when London
is subjected to "improvements" whose tendency is to overcrowd the working
population more seriously than ever. Experience has shown that the demolition
of poor neighbourhoods by new streets produces no corresponding reduction
in the number of inhabitants; for the displaced population is partly
provided for in houses previously occupied by single families; partly it is
received into houses which already contain as many inmates as they can
healthfully accommodate. A larger rent can be obtained for the same room if
it is overcrowded by a large family than if it be hired for only as many
inmates as it can properly receive. Hence the interests of landlords are
constantly on the one side, the health of the poor on the other. This