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423 cases were notified in all London, with 41 fatal cases. 349 cases were
admitted into the Metropolitan Asylums Board's hospitals.
Scarlet Fever.—Over the whole of London this disease has spread in
epidemic form, no less than 27,092 cases having been notified. 75 cases were
notified in Shoreditch (chiefly in Haggerston) in the first quarter of the year, and
they gradually increased in number, reaching a maximum in the beginning of the
fourth quarter; before that time, however, the hospitals of the Metropolitan
Asylums Board were full, and many patients had to be left in their own homes,
with the result that the disease spread more extensively in the district. On the
8th October the Managers were able to open the North Eastern Hospital. The
death-rate in Shoreditch per 100 cases notified appears to be a little lower than
that for all London, the figures being 4.07 and 4.30 respectively. In 1890 the
number of cases notified was 639; in 1891, 369 ; and in 1892, 834.
Diphtheria.—212 cases of this disease were notified, which is about the
average rate of the previous two years. It caused 50 deaths, against 84 last year,
but the death-rate 23.5 per 100 cases is a little higher than that of the total
metropolitan cases notified, viz. 22.2. The rates per 1000 inhabitants is 0.44 and
0.40 for London and Shoreditch respectively.
Enteric Fever.—I have again the pleasure to record a substantial reduction
in the number of cases of this disease in the parish. It is sometimes asked what
good is being done by the sanitary works which are being required on all hands ?
Some people seem to expect extensive and immediate results, forgetting that when
people have been subjected to insanitary influences for lengthened periods it is
impossible that their constitutions can be renovated as soon as the faulty conditions
are removed, and that improvement in health, as shown by the death rates, can only
be gradual. That such an improvement is steadily taking place a comparison of
the mortality statistics extending over 20 or more years at once shows, but in
regard to certain diseases the results follow more quickly upon the execution of
sanitary works, and of these typhoid or enteric fever is one. A continuous decrease
in the number of cases has been taking place in this parish for some years—in
1890, 202 were notified; in 1891 there were 111; and in 1892 the number had
still further fallen to 91 with 12 deaths, 8 less than in 1891—the deaths being
14 3 for Shoreditch, 17.1 for London per 100 cases notified. The mortality per
1000 inhabitants was practically the same for Shoreditch as for the whole of
London.
Erysipelas showed a marked increase in the number of cases notified (243)
over those (137) in 1891, and, as I have already reported, puerperal fever, between
which and erysipelas there is undoubtedly some connection, was also in excess of
the two former years.