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63
DEATHS IN PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS
The only large public institution within the parish in
which we are directly interested, is the parish infirmary and
workhouse, situate in the Town sub-district. There are
several minor public or quasi-public institutions, but, with
one exception, they do not furnish occasion for special remark.
The excepted institution is St. Joseph's House, Portobelloroad,
Notting-hill—a Roman Catholic Home for aged poor
persons, of both sexes, brought from various parts, largely
from Ireland : but the Registrar-General does not class it as a
public institution. The deaths of non-parishioners at the
Marylebone Infirmary, Notting-hill (478), at the Brompton
Consumption Hospital (124), and St. Joseph's House (20),
are excluded from our statistics, but will furnish occasion for
a few remarks later on. The deaths of parishioners registered
at the Parish Infirmary and Workhouse (477), at the Consumption
Hospital (13), at St. Joseph's House (6), and at
outlying institutions, &c. (286), were 782, or 27 9 per cent, on
total deaths ; the percentage proportion of deaths in public
institutions in the Metropolis, generally, being 29-0. The
Registrar-General in his Annual Summary states that about
" one in every seven deaths occurred in a workhouse or workhouse
infirmary, one in 48 in a Metropolitan Asylums Board
Hospital, one in ten in some other hospital, and one in 48
in a public lunatic or imbecile asylum." The increase in the
number of deaths in public institutions has been great and
continuous for many years past.
The Parish Infirmary and Workhouse.—I am
indebted to Dr. H. Percy Potter, the Medical Superintendent,
for the statistics of mortality at these important institutions.
The deaths actually occurring during the year were 497, as
compared with 442, 458, and 493, in the preceding three years
respectively, and were equal to 17-8 per cent on total deaths.
The quarterly numbers were 158, 103, 121, and 115 : 273
deaths, therefore, occurred in the first and fourth or colder