London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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Greenwich 1856

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Greenwich District]

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7
least, that portion of the public who do not take the trouble to
make minute enquiries into the Sanitary condition of the neighbourhood—that
all these deaths actually occurred in the Parish of
Greenwich.
During the years 1849 and 1854, when this country was
visited by Cholera, the deaths arising from that disease in the
whole Greenwich Union, comprising the Parishes above mentioned,
were all handed forth to the world by the General Board of Health
as having taken place in the Town of Greenwich.
A dark stain was thereby thrown upon the Town, from which,
I believe, it has never recovered. I have therefore been the more
induced to place these facta pointedly before you, trusting that, by
your future co-operation, I shall be enabled to reiterate from year
to year the favorable Report that I have now the honor of laying
before you.
The members of your Board must see the injustice of such
statements, and the detrimental effect they must exercise on the
property in the neighbourhood.
I believe Greenwich to be already a most healthy Town. It is
by nature well situated—gradually rising from the banks of a noble
river, with a light and porous soil, particularly favored by a good
natural drainage, most peculiarly adapted for the works of the
Sanitary reformer; and—provided it were properly drained,
properly cleansed, the houses of the poorer population more
thoroughly ventilated, kept in better repair, and furnished with a
more efficient water-supply—there is no reason why it should not
become at least one of, if not the most healthy town in the
neighbourhood of the Metropolis.
The Parishes of Saint Paul and Saint Nicholas, Deptford,
inasmuch as they contain no hospitals nor public institutions, will
require no comment in the present part of this Report, beyond what
I have already shown in the table above referred to.
The next four tables will show you the number of deaths
registered in each division of the District during each quarter of
the year, the diseases by which those deaths were caused, and the
different ages at which the whole number of those deaths took
place.