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11
Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health.
Parish of Saint George the Martyr, Southwark.
ANNUAL REPORT
MADE TO THE VESTRY
BY THE
MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH,
FOR THE YEAR ENDING LADY-PAY, 1865.
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen,
The period has again come round when I am required by the Metropolis Local
Management Act, to place before you all the events which have happened in connexion
with the health of the people of the district of St. George the Martyr, during the year
ending April 1865. This duty has to be performed under various emotions. It is one of
gratitude, when I am enabled to tell you of a death rate which is slowly, yet uninterruptedly
decreasing; and, that the comforts and health of the people are increasing. On the
other hand, it is one of sorrow when facts point contrariwise ; when called to say that the
death rate is stationary, or increasing, and that misery, want, and disease, still haunt and
crush down the people. In the years 1840 to 1849, the death rate in London was 25.1, in
1000 persons living. From that time until the year 1860, it gradually fell down to 22.6, in
1000 persons living. This period includes four years of earnest sanitary labour on the part
of the various Vestries established in the Metropolis: hence, there was much cause for
gratulation. Those who sneered at sanitary science, coupling it with the visionary schemes of
the day, were silenced: those who had doubts, held them no longer: and the many who
had hoped and worked, were greatly encouraged. Disease and death were looked upon as
under control; and confidence was felt that man should at last measure out the length of
his days, and fall only like "a shock of corn fully ripe." Seventeen deaths in 1000 persons
living, were placed as the mark at which we were to aim; perhaps, to a scale lower still,
inasmuch, as there were places in England where the death rate had only been 15; whilst
even here, all the requirements of sanitary science had not been carried out. A most unlooked
for, and most unwelcome change has, however, since 1860 come to pass. The ebb
in the death rate had in that year reached its lowest; ever since, it has been on the flow