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to the sub-district of Camberwell. But it may happen in
another way, that, by a kind of process of natural selection,
the young and able-bodied tend to accumulate in certain
localities, while the infants and the aged, and it may be the
sickly, remain in undue proportion in other localities. To
illustrate this: the death-rate of Dulwich has always been
remarkably low ; the death-rate of Peckham. without being
really remarkably high, has always been by contrast
remarkably high, and it has been assumed that, therefore,
Dulwich is far more healthy than Peckham. I believe
Dulwich to be very healthy ; I know that Peckham, in its
low-lying parts, has many elements of unhealthiness; but I
do not for one moment believe that the difference of their
death-rates indicates a corresponding difference in their
healthiness, still less, of course, that the excess of its deathrate
is a measure of the degree in which diseases, preventable
by the action of the Vestry, prevail in Peckham.
I have said on former occasions, and I repeat it now, that
there is in many parts of Peckham a large poor population ;
that amongst such a population children get neglected and
die of illnesses, from which under other conditions they
would doubtless have recovered ; that from their habits of
life contagious diseases spread anions: them with far greater
virulence than they do among the so-called better classes,
and that illnesses are manufactured amongst them which
those who live in different circumstances rarely see. I
have said formerly, and I say again, that (although important
improvements have been made) there are many
localities in Peckham which, in great measure from want of
sewerage, are still in a condition to make them (in the
presence of epidemics of cholera or of fever) hotbeds of