London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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Battersea 1894

Report upon the public health and sanitary condition of the Parish of St. Mary, Battersea during the year1894

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TABLE IV.

Battersea. 1894BirthsDeathsDeaths.Small PoxMeaslesScarlet FeverDiphtheriaWhooping CoughFeverDiarrhœaCholeraViolenceInquestsPublic Institutions (including Nonparishioners.)
Under 1 Year.Above 60 Years
1st Quarter E6112576560..132119..6..932..
w72541294125..14..8834..1235105
2nd Quarter E5991817123..51111011..720..
w6193998380..104..101023..102786
3rd Quarter E5492049520..41614..282420..
w70632210670..111772291102173
4th Quarter E5252429236......10626..529..
w69038711299......413313..132490
Whole Year E2284884323139..2243839341225101..
w27401520395374..129129381049145107354
Whole Parish50242404718513..151567771390370208354

Table V. contains a veritable sanitary history of the parish
of Battersea since 1856, the year in which modern sanitation
first came into existance under the provisions of the Metropolis
Local Management Act of 1855, and by which sanitary authorities,
in the form of Vestries and District Boards, the latter consisting
of small parishes grouped together, were first constituted for
London as a whole. This parish at that time consisted of a
congeries of small villages, between which extended market
gardens; the inhabitants and dependents of some few dozens of
large houses, the residences chiefly of merchants, with the
workers at the market gardens, constituting the principal population.
It will be observed that the population was then but
15,069, and at the census of 1861, had but reached the number
of 19,582. The birth rate was then a little higher than now.
The death rate, however, although the population was very
sparse, was much higher than at present. It has been laid down
as an axiom that mortality increases in direct proportion to the
density of population, and it is the aim of modern sanitation to
limit or prevent such increase. That the same parish, of course
with the same superficial area, should, with a ten-fold population
have a reduced instead of an augmented death rate, shews
that the authority having chargc of the sanitation, which
includes the health condition and duration of lives of the