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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, and held at
the Town Hall, 23rd March, 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 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 33 deaths, as compared with
108, 33, and 173, in the preceding three years successively :
31 in the Town sub-district and two in Brompton ; the corrected
decennial average being 87.4. All of the deaths save one
occurred in the last sixteen weeks of the year, as shown in the
table at page 24. The deaths from this cause in the metropolis,
as a whole, were 1,929, and 942 below the corrected
decennial average (2,871): 762 of the deaths were registered
in the first nine months (162, 298, and 302, in the successive
quarters) and 1,167 in the fourth quarter.
Should Measles be Notified?—The question whether
measles should be made a notifiable disease under Section 55
of the Public Health (London) Act, 1891, is raised from time
to time by persons who naturally think or hope that publication
of sickness returns would lead to reduction in the fatality