Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for St. Giles District]
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50. In New Compton Street, with a population of 1,250 in 74 houses'
equal to 17 persons in each house, the deaths were 33, yielding a death-rate
from these diseases of 26.4 per 1,000.
51. In Dudley Street, with a population of 1,456 in 89 houses, equal to
10 persons to each house, the deaths were 30, yielding a death-rate from these
diseases of 20.6 per 1,000.
52. In each of these instances the death-rate would have been largely
increased had the whole mortality been included. Computed, however, upon
the basis of the three special classes of disease above, their average mortality
has been equal to the average death-rate of the metropolis from all
orders diseases whatsoever.
The comparative prevalence, locally, of Zymotic and Pulmonary Diseases.
53. Some remarks may be appropriately made on the local prevalence of
one or other of the classes of disease included in the " Register," so far as a
single year affords evidence. Taking two classes of disease, the zymotic and
the pulmonary, including in the latter, phthisis for our present purpose, we
find that zymotic diseases were the least prevelent, and pulmonary diseases
the most prevalent among the lowest class of our population, whilst the proportions
were reversed in the case of a better class of working people. The
lowest class of our population are, of course, adult tramps, who frequent
Queen Street, Charles Street, Short's Gardens, &c., and a large number of
Irish families who inhabit Great Wild Street and its neighbouring courts,
Church Lane, &c., and who may be said to live in the streets rather than in
their houses. The better class are usually English artizans, occupying one
or two rooms, and whose families live more indoors than the Irish. Lung
diseases, it appears, have prevailed most among those who have been most
exposed to vicissitudes of weather, whilst zymotic diseases have chiefly
attacked families where the children have been kept at home in ill-ventilated
rooms. There is a mixed class of English and of Irish families of more
settled habits, among whom the mortality has been more equally divided
between the two forms of disease. Dividing the localities into three sections,
viz :—1st. When the death from pulmonary diseases were double those from
the zymotic class; 2nd. When they were less than double ; and 3rd, when
the deaths from zymotic diseases exceeded those from the pulmonary, we
get the following results :—
TABLE No. VIII.—C omparative prevalence op Z ymotic and D iseases in certain S treets.
Pulmonary
Sections. | Localities. | Deaths from Zymotic Diseases. | Deaths from Pulmonary Discs. |
---|---|---|---|
1st | Lincoln Court | 1 | 7 |
Short' Gardens | 2 | 11 | |
Tower Streat | 3 | 12 | |
Chapel Place | 4 | 13 | |
King Street (Drury Lane) | 5 | IB | |
Church Lane | 6 | 10 | |
Queen Street | 6 | 1g | |
Great Wild Streat | 8 | 19 | |
2nd | Drury Lane | 6 | 10 |
Dudley Street | 9 | 17 | |
New Compton Street | 14 | 14 | |
3rd | Lascelles Place | 4 | 3 |
Brownlow Street | 4 | 3 | |
Castle Street | 4 | 3 | |
Museum Street | 7 | 2 | |
Little Russell Street | 5 | 1 | |
High Holborn | 6 | 1 |