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of last year was on Tuesday, the 27th December, when the thermometer
indicated 17°.2 or 14.°8 below the freezing point of water.
The lowest mean temperature during any week in the Quarter was
in that which ended January 22nd, when it was 18°.5.
The Registrar-General, in his last Quarterly return of marriages,
births, and deaths registered in England and Wales, remarks, "that
so low a death rate for the first Quarter of the year has not been
recorded since that of 1856, when a similar rate prevailed. This low
death rate in the Quarter under notice is the more remarkable on
account of the exceptionally severe frost that prevailed during a considerable
portion of January. There were 40 frosty days during the
Quarter, and the lowest reading on each of those days showed an
aggregate of 278.3 degrees of frost. This amount of cold weather
exceeds that recorded in the corresponding period of any year since
1855, when the aggregate degrees of frost were 404.7."
The falls of snow throughout the Quarter were exceptional.
Snow fell on 53 days, and the snow-storm of the 18th day of January
was very remarkable. Nearly all the lines of railway out of London
were blocked. Trains were embedded in the snow all night, and
during the next day.
Table of Weekly Mortality, &c., in London and in the
Whitechapel District.