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certain amount of injury to health, and most of those who follow such
trades have, doubtless, selected their present position at a time when
the population was comparatively scarce; the conditions having become
altered by the increased and increasing number of inhabitants, it may,
possibly, become necessary to cause those, whose occupations are
injurious, to carry on their processes in some locality where a less
amount of injury would result than in a densely-populated district. I
am gratified in being able to inform the Vestrv that few, if any, cases
exist at present, which will immediately require such interposition.
HABITATIONS OF THE POOR.
It is to be regretted that the great increase in the number of
habitations should have been allowed to take place without some
municipal direction, or some supervision competent to supply its place
—the general salubrity of the District would certainly have been
better secured. A great number of the buildings destined for occupation
by the labouring classes are constructed of the most inferior
materials, in the cheapest possible manner, without proper drainage,
and without any observance of order, regularity, or regard to light,
or to ventilation by natural currents of air. Every owner of a piece
of ground has had the opportunity of making the most of it for his
own advantage, and in real opposition to the public good. The
houses, thus originally badly constructed, have been insufficiently
repaired as they have become decayed or injured, and it will be a
prominent part of the duty of the Medical Officer of Health, with the
aid of the Vestry, to endeavour, by improving the state of the
habitations of the poor, to remedy a soml evil which is, in his
opinion, the greatest defect in the Hamlet.
EPIDEMIC DISEASES.
Epidemics, such as influenza, cholera, typhus or scarlet fever,
have not, within the last thirty years, found any very congenial spot
in the Hamlet, notwithstanding its defects, where they might become
developed and intensified. The mortality of Mile End Old Town is
less than that of the Parish or Union of Stepney, of which it forms