London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London

St George (Southwark) 1872

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Southwark, The Vestry of the Parish of St. George the Martyr]

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Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health,—1871—72.
13

Table: TABLE No. 8, Continued.

TABLE No. 8, Continued.

1871—2.Small PoxMeaslesScarlet FeverDiphtheriaWhooping CoughFeverDiarrhœaTabes, Teething, &c1871—2.Small PoxMeaslesscarlet feverDiphtheriaWhooping CoughFeverDiarrhœaTabes. Teething, &c.
South Street..................1Webber Street3.........2......3
tar Yard............1.........Warner Street...111......11
Southwark Bridge Road...1............26White Street......1.........12
Westcott Street............1...12
Warwick Street...1..................
Temple Street3..................3Walker Street.....................1
Townsend Street1......1......1...William Street......2...21...1
Tower Street.....................7William's Place1.....................
Thomas Court...............]......Wellington Terrace..................1...
Wellington Street...............1...
Wellington Place...1...............1
Union Street, L.R...................13Wurtemburgh Place3..................1
Wickharn Place1.........1......1
Wilmott's Buildings..................1...
Valentine Row............1......1Waterloo Road......2.........14
Valentine Place......2...............West Square...............1...2
Workhouse...3.........1...9
Webber Row............1...33York Street, K.R1............112

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In my last Report, when directing your attention to the Table which marks out the
localities in which the deaths from zymotic diseases had taken place, I pointed to Peabody's
Buildings, then just opened, as an experiment about to be made nigh us; and which I
ventured to predict would show a death rate considerably lower than that shown in any
other part of our Parish. The death rate however has proved comparatively high, reaching
to 23½ in 1000 persons living, or one in 43. I find from Reports of other Model
Buildings a more favourable state of health prevailing, the death rate averaging 17 per
1000 only, a little higher than three or four of the most salubrious spots in England. It
is necessary to bear in mind when considering this low death rate, that those who live in
these Buildings, are for the most part the temperate and best conducted of the working
classes. Peabody's Buildings were too soon occupied after being finished. Months afterwards,
when visiting them, we found many of the ground floors very damp.
This housing of the people, as regards health and morality, is a matter of the gravest
and of ever increasing importance. There is material wealth in abundance, and which
might reasonably be applied to this purpose. And wealth in this case, as in other cases,
would beget wealth ; for the real and abiding wealth of a nation consists in the health of
its masses. Health to the majority of the population is their only wealth ; without it they
become pauperised, a plague to themselves and to every one about them ; fulfilling apparently
no duty in life, except indeed it bo to call forth the patience and self-sacrifice of
those who minister to them To maintain health is a duty, to which hitherto due imporTance
has not been given. Wo seem rather to have shown how far recklessness might be
carried, to the injury and destruction of our bodies. And it happens that in those cases
here care is shown in their preservation, it is in the following out of old saws which would
be better disregarded and forgotten. " All breaches of the laws of health are physical sins;''
and bring about as sad and disastrous results as those brought about through breaches of
the moral laws. And it is quite time that every person should feel his own responsibility