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being measles 7 days, exhaustion 3 days. In some of the eases,
measles being the primary cause of death, whooping-cough was
returned as a secondary cause. In several cases of whoopingcough,
returned as the primary cause of death, measles was
returned as a secondary cause. In regard to each of these
diseases, of course, the death is classified to the primary cause
mentioned in the medical certificate of the cause of death.
With few exceptions the deceased children belonged to the
lower classes in the social scale. Measles indeed is a disease
which rarely has a fatal termination among the children of the
well-to-do classes. During the epidemic great numbers of
children were kept from public elementary schools, either as
suffering from the disease, or because of the disease being in
the houses where they lived, and, many children no doubt
continued to attend school from houses where the disease
prevailed; possibly, even in the families of which they were
members, and thus, by mediate infection, contributed to spread
the disease. Children are not knowingly allowed to attend
school from houses where the malady exists. Measles, it may
be mentioned, becomes epidemic at about every third year, and
few susceptible children escape in the families of persons living
in tenemented houses, or houses let in lodgings. It is so
infectious a complaint, and from such an early stage—probably
from the beginning—that little can be done, by way of isolation,
to prevent spread in the homes of the poorer classes. The
disease had been epidemic in the Metropolis for a long time,
spreading from district, to district, this parish being among
the last to be seriously affected.
The deaths in the parish from this cause in the ten years
1886-95 were 817, viz.: 111, 56, 108, 124, 14, 140, 29, 109, 18,
and 108, in the successive years. The general alternation of a
heavy and a light death-rate in successive years is apparent in
these figures. In both 1888 and 1889, however, the disease
was fatally prevalent; from March to July in the former year,
and from October to December in the latter year.