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Parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark.
Parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark.
ANNUAL REPORT
MADE TO THE VESTRY
by the
MEDICAL OFFICES OF HEALTH.
FOR THE YEAR ENDING LADY-DAY, 1869.
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen,
I have the honor, this evening, to place before you the thirteenth Annual report of
the births and deaths, and likewise the sanitary condition of the District of St. George the
Martyr. Many events of considerable importance to this small division of the Metropolis,
have come to pass in the period of time that has gone by, since the first Annual Report was
presented to you. Work has been done; obloquy borne; prejudice lived down; sickness
prevented, and life lengthened. Proposals then made, and which were considered wild and
impracticable, have not only been put into practice, but have become obsolete, and fall
far short of what is now confidently demanded. The folly of yesterday has become the
wisdom of to day. Long years must however elapse before the good done can become fully
manifest. A more plenteous harvest shall greet future reapers. But the present is not
void of encouragement. Although it has scornfully been said of Statistics, that they are
like cobwebs, beautifully reticulated, and orderly to look upon, yet, that they would hold
no conclusion; nevertheless they have proved of inestimable value to the Social Reformer.
Without statistics, Sanitary Works would not have been carried out so fully and so universally
as we now find them. They have revealed to many a town and neighbourhood, which
were considered by the inhabitants as possessing all the elements which aid in the maintenance
of health and strength, that their state was precisely the reverse; that their
mortality has reached far beyond that which characterises a healthy locality. The proportion
of deaths to the population, has proved painfully sensational, and has aroused them
from their state of false security. Statistics have shown truly in all places how far the life
of man has fallen short of the allotted period of three score years and ton; and they have
shown also, by what diseases it has been assailed, as well as pointed out the epidemics that
from time to time have hastened thousands away to an untimely grave. They have for ever
established the fact, that where man has lived in the midst of filth, within undrained
streets, over cesspools, and amid grave yards filled with the dead of many generations, and
where he has drank water, in which there was literally death in the glass, that sickness
has been abiding, and life short. Down to almost the present period, owing to our helplessness
and ignorance, and owing to the stern inflexibility of nature's laws, we have been as victims