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2
Of other diseases classed as zymotic by the Registrar General, smallpox
caused 646 deaths—a number still in excess of the non-epidemic standard of
the disease; measles, scarlatina, and whooping cough were each fatal above the
average of the ten preceding years; but none of these diseases were so fatal as
in 1864. Continued and infantile fevers produced during 1865 excessive numbers
of deaths; the epidemic of typhus, which began in 1862, persisting until
the end of the past year.
The several groups of districts into which the metropolis is divided, contributed
less unequally than usual to the death-rates of 1865, the districts upon
which the singular mortality of 1864 especially fell, showing in 1865 their
death-rates reduced to nearly their ordinary amount; whereas the districts that
had no great share in producing the excess of 1864, do not show any such remarkable
reduction in 1865. (Appendix table I).
Section II.— On the Mortality of St. Giles's in 1865, from all Causes.
Comparison with other Districts.
The Central districts of London had a death-rate in 1865 of 27 in the
thousand. In 1864, their rate was 29¼, and in the mean of the five years preceding,
it was 26. St. Giles's district, which is one of the central group, had
in 1865, a death-rate of 292/3; in 1864, of 31, and in the mean of the five former
years of 28. Steadily therefore, but in 1865 rather more than usual, the mortality
of the district has been in excess of those among which it is grouped.

* Correction is here made for the longer duration of the registration years 1857 & 1863.
Also for all deaths in hospitals and outlying Workhouses.
For comparison of St. Giles's with each district surrounding it, the table
on the opposite page has been constructed. It appears, from this table, that
Holborn was ("after correction) a little worse than St. Giles in its death-rate,
and that the Strand district was nearly as bad. From the foregoing summary
the fact also appears, and should be mentioned, although there is no satisfaction
in it, that of recent years there has been little to choose between St. Giles and
Holborn, and not much between St. Giles and the Strand, whereas at the
beginning of these reports, there was a difference of about two in the
thousand against St. Giles's.
Scrutiny of the table indeed, suggests that in the past year at any
rate, St. Giles district did not suffer disproportionately to its neighbours from
causes that are most under sanitary controul The great excess of deaths in
St. Giles's occurred during the inclement winter and spring weather that has
been noted, and resulted to some extent indeed from epidemic typhus, but in
the main from the fatality of old bronchitis and consumption among the residents
of the workhouse and common lodging houses, who are disproportionately
numerous in this district. In the third quarter of the year, the season of typhoid
fever and diarrhoea, (although there was much of such disease in St. Giles's),
St. Pancras alone shows a smaller registered mortality than this district.