Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Annual report on the health, sanitary condition, &c., &c., of the Parish of St. Mary Abbotts, Kensington for the year, 1899
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been, not 429, but 18,752. There has thus been a saving of
more than 18,000 lives in the ten years. This satisfactory
result—admittedly due, mainly, to the removal of the sick
from London—was the outcome of the deputation of the
sanitary authorities, and other public bodies, to the President
of the Local Government Board, on April 23rd, 1881, the
primary object of the deputation being to present the resolutions
adopted at the Conference of sanitary authorities, convened
by your Vestry to consider the question of the Compulsory
Notification of Infectious Disease, a measure for which
London had to wait a further period of eight years. The
proceedings at the deputation were fully reported in the
British Medical Journal (May 7th, 1881, page 744); and in
my Annual Report for 1880-81, (page 57), may be seen, not
only the history of the movement originated by your Vestry
to secure Compulsory Notification, but also the story of the
circumstances which led up to my recommendation of the
removal of small-pox cases out of London; a recommendation
which was acted upon by the Local Government Board and
the Asylums Board with such promptitude, that within two
or three weeks some hundreds of patients were comfortably
housed at the Darenth "Camp," and the difficulty of hospital
accommodation for sufferers from small-pox was solved, once
and for ever, with the happy result above indicated.
MEASLES.
Measles was the cause of 24 deaths (all under five years
of age and six of them under one), as compared with 173, 33,
and 120, in the three preceding years successively: 23 in the
Town sub-district and 1 in Brompton; the corrected decennial
average being 80. Twenty of the deaths occurred in the
second half-period of the year. The deaths from this cause
in the metropolis, as a whole, were 2,141, and 700 below the
corrected decennial average: 386, 695, 530, and 530, in the
four quarters successively.