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8
Viewed as a cause of the very high mortality of St. Giles's, the Zymotic
Class of diseases requires special consideration, as they are the class most
amenable to public sanitary measures. It is found that this group (as a
whole) has furnished even less than its estimated number of deaths. This
fact is probably mainly due to some of those fluctuations from year to year,
to which the zymotic class is especially liable, but it may also be supposed to
be evidence that the measures of sanitary improvement that can be enforced
by local authorities, have not been without their effect in our district. The
same circumstance was recorded in the Report for 1863.
Of diseases of this class, measles, scarlatina, croup, and whooping cough
are those which have been less fatal in St. Giles' than we should calculate for
its population. On the other hand, smallpox, diarrhoea, and continued fevers
have been in slight excess. Referring to the table for a statistical account of
the degree to which these diseases have prevailed, it will suffice to state that
of fevers the one which has caused most deaths has been true typhus. The
epidemic of this disease, which began in London in 1861, had not subsided in
1864. St. Giles has shared in its prevalence, and of the 85 deaths registered
in 1864, from various forms of fever, 65 were from typhus. The deaths that
are entered under smallpox, include one from chickenpox; of the 11 persons
who lost their lives from real smallpox, not one had been vaccinated : no vaccinated
person died of smallpox in the year.
Tubercular Diseases, of which consumption affecting the lungs is the most
important, were as usual, intensely fatal to our district. It has been said that
consumption was remarkably fatal in London, but it was so much more prevalent
in St. Giles, that 315 deaths occurred instead of the quota (already
exceptionally high) of 217.6 which our population would be calculated to give.
Nearly two.fifths of the total excess of deaths iu St. Giles are to be laid to the
account of this single disease.
Diseases of the Breathing Organs, another group which has been particularly
fatal to the metropolis as a whole, have been also fatal far beyond their
calculated degree to St. Giles. The high quota of 278.4 deaths has been
exceeded by no less than 128, giving a total of 406 deaths from this order of
diseases, and accounting for nearly all the remainder of the excess which has
been noted in the gross mortality of St. Giles.
The other classes of disease of exceptional prevalence in St. Giles in 1864,
have been diseases of the heart, and the disorders incident to early periods of
life. Every other important class of disease has contributed to our death
registers almost exactly the due of our population at the existing rate of mortality
in the town.
A number of children suffocated as usual; three, if not four, infants murdered;
and the fact of there being no single suicide, are the points most needing
notice among the returns of violent deaths.
The above are the most noteworthy facts that may be gathered from the
preceding table, and from the appended tables III and IV.
SECTION IV.—On the Localization of Disease and Death in St. Giles's
in 1864.
It is proposed, in this report, to consider the localization of fatal disease
more briefly than formerly, regarding in the main the three sub.districts of the
Registrar General. (Appendix V.) *
* The boundaries of the three sub.districts are as follows Bloomsbury, coterminous
with the Parish of St. George. St. Giles' South, all the Parish lying to the east of a line
drawn along St. Andrew's Streets from St. Martin's Lane to Broad Street, where it meets
the Boundary of Bloomsbury Parish. St. Giles North, all the remainder of the Parish,
stuate West of the above line, and West of the Parish of Bloomsbury.