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2 Parish af Saint George the Martyr, Southwards.
Thomas Street, Northampton Street, Hunter Street, Amelia Street, Wickham Gardens, Lansdowne
Place and Paul's Yard—with respect to Amelia Street, reported upon last quarter, the inhabitants
on the east side themselves complain of the offensive and damp condition of their places, and they
remark that death has been busy among them, and that the opposite side of this narrow street,
where we some time since insisted upon sound sanitary improvement, has altogether escaped; they
cannot help connecting the immunity with the improvement. I believe their remarks to be just,
and that they have reason to complain. One the one side they have some cesspools and a rotten
drain near the surface and near the houses, and the houses are often damp within. Here 8 deaths
have occurred from scarlet fever and diptheria. On the other side of the street referred to as
having entirely escaped, certain orders were made, I copy the following from the inspector's book
and the work is reported to have been well done. The complaint was of foul and offensive cesspools,
defective drains, untrapped sinks, and houses smelling very offensively—serious illness then
resulted, and the order made was to empty and fill up cesspools, to connect by pipe drain with
sewer, to put proper pans and syphon traps, and lay on a sufficient water supply to closets; to
trap all sinks, and erect covered dust bins. These proceedings have probably saved many lives on
the west side of Amelia Street. In the face of so many deaths from putrid disease on the east or
foul side of Amelia Street, and the immunity from death on the side where good work was done,
I have not been able to prevail upon your Committee to order prompt and efficient work, and I
believe your quasi order* that no more cesspools should be filled up was pleaded as the reason.
My voice will soon be hushed here, but I once more protest that this is unintentionally perpetuating
an unnatural and excessive mortality. In this 4th table are recorded the particulars of 2613 cases of
illness. I have omitted the fifth table altogether. I have for a long time past been obliged to
take averages for one of the poor districts, the returns being irregular. In their present conditiou
they are of no value to your Officer of Health; but as the poor-law officers can be of the greatest
service to the Officer of Health, I beg to advise a more complete concert with the Board of
Guardians upon this point.
The sixth table contains, as usual, the particulars of disease, sex and age, and the
mortality from each specified cause during the corresponding quarter last year. The zymotic
mortality is 97 as against 56—from lung diseases 102 as against 89—from scarlatina and diptheria
45 as against 10—measles 12 in excess—233 of the 375 deaths took place in persons below 20 years
of age, and 220 under 10. The deaths from violence and privation are less 5 as against II, the
corresponding quarter; but I could swell this last list considerably, for I consider that no death
that we can prevent really takes place from the visitation of God so much as by the culpable
neglect of man, and these may all be called violent deaths.
And now I come to the last or seventh table, which contains a rather rough catalogue
of our sanitary work. I have already shown that our mortality increases, and that the deaths, in
which the principal increase is shown, are those considered by our wisest and most practical men
as more or less preventable, more or less connected with bad local causes; as this appears to me
without doubt to be so (and I have had 20 years experience and bias for the study to guide me),
I may ask, with some reason, what are we doing to improve the sanitary condition of our very
unhealthy parish P and this seventh table gives the answer, and a very unsatisfactory one it is.
* Note appended by order op Vestry " The Vestry has not passed any order whatever preventing the
filling up of cesspools, but has merely ordered that none be directed to be filled up without the order of
the Vestry.