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No. 10.
Parish of Saint George the Martyr, Southwark
REPORT OF THE MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH,
For the Third Quarter, 1858.
25th October 1858.
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen op the Vestrt,
I have now to bring before you my eleventh quarterly report—I shall have to relate to
you that two distinct epidemics have prevailed, and have together caused GO deaths during the
quarter; I would I could say they had passed away. In your written instructions to me I am
directed to ascertain the existence, especially of epidemics increasing the rate of mortality; to
point out the existence of any nuisances or other local causes which tend to originate and maintain
such diseases, and thus affect the health of the inhabitants: (thus as you see recognized as causes
of epidemics, by your own body).
I have brought before this Vestry and the Committee six ordinary and two special
reports.
I now come to the Tables.—
The first shows a great increase of deaths in the quarter; far exceeding the mortality of
any corresponding quarters since 1845; except 1849 and 1854; and they were the years of the
great cholera epidemics: the mortality for the quarter just ended is 369; exceeding the last
quarter by 73, and the corresponding quarter last year by 93.
Reasonable work being ordered, every precaution should be taken, to have it well done,
for the localities supposed to be improved, to which numberless visits have been paid, and about
which a great deal of trouble has been taken, are turning up again and again, with new defects, as
well as with o*d ones unremedied : epidemics soon find them out, they are recorded in the Medical
Poor Law Officer's books and in the death reports of the Registrar General; tfke for instance
Amelia Street, where several deaths are now occurring from malignant scarlet fever; pans were
put, the cesspools appear to have been abolished;—they had better have been let alone: pipes
were laid from the pans to a surface drain much nearer the houses ;—a loose stone or wood covers
it, it has little slope and no bottom, so that scarcely anything can run off: I easily pushed a stick
18 inches down ; the sides are old bricks so far apart that I could put the stick between; I saw
the night soil there, it appears to remain, tainting the air and saturating the soil; from one closet
the soil oozes to the surface ;—no wonder Ihe woman who has lost two children complains of the
stench in summer coming into the back parlour,—that at No. I where another child is dead, they
smell the privy and drain in the house, especially when the water comes on and stirs up the
cesspool, and that when the house is shut up, it smells very bad indeed ;—it cannot be otherwise,
the night soil saturates the ground.
Touching the cesspools—You hesitate to 6end away the corruption which so increases our
mortality, and which a warmer, drier, and less windy season has not failed to develope into active
sources of disease : at this end of the sewers where the cesspools are, these emanations are death,
at least 159 the number of deaths this quarter more or less connected with putridity as a cause,
tells us so. 1 am very far from saying that the Thames is the best place to send our sewage ; but
while we hesitate, our children die by scores; and our working population become emaciated, in
houses where these smells meet us at the front door. Who can gainsay that it is best to send the
filth to be so diluted by the immense flow of waters there, that although, perhaps productive of
slight sickness, it is probably robbed of its death-producing power, than to keep it here to arouse
up the perpetually recurring and fatal pestilence.
Let us see what the sewage does in the river and what it does here; I quote from papers
issued weekly, from government offices: July 10th "no case of any importance has come under'
treatment among the Custom-house officers, of whom 800 are always on the river and 500 on its