View report page

12 Parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark.
We may place the death, rate at 17 per 1000, with the greatest certainty of not making
it too low, for, in some localities it has sunk down to 15 per 1000. That of this district
is, as I have said, 26.48; consequently there have died during the past year 526 persons,
who had they lived in Glendale, Rothbury, or Eastbourne, would now have been in the
possession of life, and fulfilling the duties, that life demanded from them. These persons
have come to as an untimely an end, as if they had been swept from off the earth, by a
platoon of musketry.
If one situation is so genial, and healthy, that only 15 die in the 1000 annually;
and in another situation 36 die in the same number, and time; it is very clear that there
must be some destructive cause at work,—either arising from climate, occupation, or the
social condition of the people,—in the one, which is absent from, the other. To keep
down to the lowest point the death rate, is one of the most grave, and important duties of
this Vestry. For the death rate will proclaim aloud, and truthfully to all who will listen,
our sanitary condition. We cannot hide the fact if we would. Yearly must be recorded
the number of deaths, and the causes which produced them. Many of these causes are
removeable, many more are reducible; nevertheless to bring about any notable diminution
will be a work, in which time must greatly help. Good comes slowly; it is like growth,
silent, and gradually progressive; there is first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn
in the ear. Destruction alone is in the sudden whirlwind; and in the throes of the rending
earthquake. To carry out measures which have for their end, the general good, is by
no means a plain and simple task. Many great and wise plans have been frustrated, or
ruined, from the way in which it was sought to bring them into operation. All must pass
through a period of opposition and ridicule; and the Public Health Movement has not
escaped the trial: but it has passed through unscathed, and the better for the discipline
One proclamation of our advance, and success, has been made; the Registrar General in
his weekly returns of births, deaths, and causes of death in London during the year 1862,
says, "The South districts have achieved for themselves a marked improvement."
TABLE 2.