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Report of the Medical Officer of Health, for the Third Quarter, 1858. 3
putrid nature, have now occurred in the Mint; these complaints affect localities where putrid
emanations arise with all their usual disease-producing accompaniments: they concentrate,
become more putrid, and then shift their seat to some other spot more or less favorable to the
untoward influences. Here is of course a responsibility, which brings us into contact not only
with the sufferers in our own bad streets and alleys, but when such disease overflows into other
Parishes, and by a growing intensity spreads from town to town, as its custom is, especially when
invited, we may even stand as the careless originators of deaths beyond our district and beyond
our knowledge. The back districts of this Parish require relief as much as Ireland ever did from
a class of middle-men, who with some few most honourable exceptions, grind out nil they can
from the squalid districts, and carry nothing back in the way of cleanliness or improvement:
it would be well if the great landlords would themselves occasionally see the neglected condition
of the places so underlet. In a circle about the Parish church, there have been three deaths
from typhus and four from an equivalent disease, typhoscarlatina; one of them in
May-Pole Alley, a place no epidemic ever misses, and which is now fast retrogressing towards all
its original filth and unwholesomeness ; indeed the work so often ordered, has never been really
done :—two from typhus and scarlet fever in Wilmott's Buildings; a place closely inhabited
and inclosed with high walls; it is well known that these diseases occur in overcrowded places
just such as this. In a circle about Mint Street, comprising Lant Street, William Street, &c.,
have occurred, one death from scarlet fever, nine from measles, seven from diarrhoea; this locality
is improving and the deaths are much fewer than formerly. About Kent Street and its tributary
streets and courts have occurred two deaths from typhus, seven from scarlatina, seven from
measles, seven from diarrhoea : comprised in this are St. George's New Town recently built,
badly drained, and much neglected—Hunter and Rephidim Streets—Paul's Yard, the house in
which two deaths are reported is tainted with privy and drain smells from a foul cesspool and is
now before you for remedy : in the Government report on the sanitary condition of the epidemic
districts (so they are called) in St. George's, Southwark, 1852; Henry Street, Hunter Street,
Paul's Yard, Potier Street, and Noel's Court are noted as places remarkably unhealthy:
Westcott, Henry, and Etham Streets show one death from scarlatina, three from measles, and
four from diarrhoea: the names of these streets are familiar to us as sources of disease and of
great expense to the Parish—filth, deficiency of water, bad storage, and streets so constructed as
to allow of little healthy current are the characteristics which have been often noted, as yet
without real remedy. About the Kent Road I count fifteen deaths from typhus and scarlatina,
one from measles, two from diarrhoea: nine of them took place in Cornbury Street where we
recognize the drain and privy smells as causes of the malignancy of the fever; two in
Northampton Street where the small-pox attacked so many last April, and where now five more
deaths are recorded from scarlatina; Amelia Street, previously mentioned, where fever was fatal
some few months ago, thirteen cases have now occurred of scarlatina and diphtheria and four of
them are now dead: one at Mina Cottages, where, on a late visit, I found 147 persons living by
what the Government report already cited calls "a stinking ditch," many of them taking their
water from a pump by the side of it or from rotten butts,—where they have no drains but the
open ditch and no privies but those which stand over it About Green Street as a centre I find
ten deaths from diarrhoea and two from measles; diarrhoea has been far more fatal here than
elsewhere, and now malignant scarlatina is appearing; in one respectable house two fine-giown
children are dead ; the place is clean and the drains good, but the house is so situated, as
frequenily to receive the full current of air, loaded with putrifying particles and deleterious gases
from Green Street; the two previous occupants lost the one, two children the other three, and
they all, I am informed, complain of this only. I find three deaths from diarrhoea in
Martin Street; the father of one significantly, but not quite correctly, told me " they always die of
diarrhoea here;'"—this street has always been peculiarly liable to this kind of disease and is so • i
noted in the report cited; the houses are many of them damp and the gronnd appears to be '
saturated from old drains and cesspools. In Gray Street, of which I have now had notice, through
the Registrar General's papers and the district surgeon's book, are five cases, four of them dead—
in the most of all these cases 1 find defects sufficient in my opinion to convert an ordinary disease
into one more severe; and in many, the sources of positive putridity. It may perhaps be said
that all this is in the order of nature, and cannot be prevented; my experience of a quarter of a
century among these diseases points quite the other way. Providence does not intend that
reservoirs of stinking, putrid matter shall stand so close to the poor man's door, as to infest him
at bed and at board ;—truly some of these diseases may come by other agencies, and may happily
give immunity for the future ; but when they enter a foul district then it is they become deadly ;
and these epidemics now visiting us, point to this truth in a remarkable manner : be it understood
that 1 use the name of Providence in these reports with the utmost veneration and care ; I would
. not be thought to use the Divine Authority lightly, and for the support of any argument that might
occur. In the Jewish Scriptures the places for the purposes here mentioned are ordered to "be
without the camp as far from the breathing and eating place as possible ; and among us, as yon
see, when we tolerate such abominations—He visits us with death : it is the result of the
irrevocable laws of nature, often averted by what appear as happy accidents, but at last when
disregarded, deadly. Gentlemen, you are the trustees for life and death to a population of well
nigh 30,000 people, who from the force of circumstances,are more or less unable to help
themselves.