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Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health—1864. 19
where the deaths of this class have been numerous, without the causes mentioned being to
any great extent in operation. Surrey Street shews the largest number; yet this street
was less than two years ago, sewered and drained from end to end; and the houses upon
the whole are of a better kind. Next follow as regards this special mortality, Southwark
Bridge Road, "Westminster Eoad, and Old Kent Road; all good open roads, and well
sewered, with, perhaps, the exception of Southwark Bridge Eoad, Elliott's Eow, from its
largo yards behind on the west side, and its equally large gardens in front on the east side,
and from its general good sanitary condition, I should have expected would have escaped
more lightly than the record tells. St. George's New Town has drawn to itself latterly a
great share of attention, from the fever having there been so persistent and wide spread.
Contrast this place as it is now, with what it was three years ago. Then, the roads were in
the filthiest condition possible; full of holes, with neither drain nor gulley : the houses with
cess-pools attached, imperfectly drained, and in a dilapidated condition. Now, the former
have been picked up, raised, and channelled; gullies placed where needed; the curbstones
also raised and made good; whilst the latter have all been drained, water-closets
substituted for cess-pools, and constant repairs been carried on. For, not only will the
squalid and wretched dwelling sap the virtue of the tenant, but in like manner will the
careless, dirty, and vicious habits of the tenant bring down the dwelling to his own level.
Our forefathers knew nothing about the public health, and cared less; they added house
to house, and street to street according to their own will and apparent benefit, and so have
left us this mingled heritage. Towns were the result, and from them comes civilization.
Without them, commerce with its ships on every sea, and its markets in every land, would
have had no place. Arts, literature, science, and whatever tends to exalt and adorn a people,
have had in them their origin. They are the hearts which throb out into the nation,
its life blood. A nation of scattered people could not exist as such. "At present above a
sixth part of the nation is crowded into principal towns of more than thirty thousand
inhabitants: "yet towns have proved fatal to man. There is that within them which
undermines his constitution, and which is ever pushing him down into a lower degree of
manhood. "I believe," says the late Sir A. Carlisle, "that no person town bred in both
the male and female lines ever extended their children to the fourth generation." This
degeneracy, the result of what has been called the "great town system," has its origin
from some or all of the following causes:—unhealthy locality, a noxious local and general
atmosphere, insufficient air, insufficient and improper food, unhealthy occupations, social
misery, wretchedness, and crime (Aitkin.) To the getting rid of these, must our earnest
and never ceasing labour be given. As. is the moral state of a city, so will be its social condition
; and its moral state will depend, to a large extent, upon the obedience paid to sanitary
laws. But when all is done, much will still remain outside all sanitary influence. We "cannot
control the overtasked brain of the scholar; or restrain the appetite of the glutton; or
give peace of mind, or exercise of body to the careworn man of business." Neither can we
repress the unruly passions, nor the restless ambition, nor the vanity, nor the intense selfishness
of man ; nor can we enable him to resist the temptations which lie in wait for him on
every side; nor make the "battle of life" less a struggle ; nor the means of subsistence more
sure and certain. But any evil which comes within the power of this Yestry to mitigate or destroy,
will not be permitted to range uncontrolled within the district of St. George the Martyr.
May 23rd, 1865. HENEY BATESON, MJX, Medical Officer of Health.