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11
At the Lying-in Hospital in Endell Street, the high mortality of 1865
was exceeded in 1866. There were no less than four deaths of mothers and
21 of children in the first three quarters of the year. Prom the middle of
June to the middle of September, erysipelas occurred to a serious extent in
the wards ; six children died from this disease and one mother from puerperal
fever. The Hospital was then closed for cleansing and repairs, and only one
other death occurred between its reopening and the end of the year.
A subjoined table shows in summary the work of the Bloomsbury
Dispensary in 1866. For the same reasons that caused the numbers at the
Workhouse to be so high, the amount of medical assistance given to the poor
by the Dispensary was vastly greater than its usual amount. If the total
number of new admissions to its benefits be taken as the measure, it
is found that the usefulness of the charity has been very closely double that
of any recent year.

*Including 488 cases of Diarrhoea, some of which were of a choleraic nature, and
one or two cases of collapsed Cholera,
f Including 260 cases of Diarrhoea and choleraic Diarrhoea.
During the epidemic of cholera and diarrhoea of last autumn, the Board
of Works, acting under an Order of Council applying the Diseases Prevention
Act, provided medical advice and medicines to all poor persons suffering under
cholera and diarrhoea, and had under treatment, between the end of July and
the end of November, about 70 cases of cholera and 9000 of diarrhoea. The
Shelton School building was fitted up as a temporary hospital for cholera,
and into it 57 cases of cholera were admitted, of which 37 proved fatal.
Eighteen other persons were admitted suffering from choleraic or some other
severe form of diarrhoea and 67 persons were taken into rooms set apart as a
refuge and place of observation.
The Infants' Home, 35, Great Coram Street, has been pursuing its
course through the year. Ninety illegitimate infants were received here in
1866, forty-six of them being accompanied by their mothers, while forty-four
of them were admitted without their mothers. The deaths among the
children in the Home were no fewer than 36, and two others died in St.
Bartholomew's Hospital. It is hoped that the adoption of a rule more
stringently requiring the nursing of each child by its own mother, and of
some system of educating the women to perform the duties of motherhood,
may, in the future, operate to reduce the excessive mortality among these
unhappy children. At present it is impossible to avoid a conviction that the
relief of the mothers from the burthen of their offspring is obtained at an
unwarrantable cost of life among the infants.