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Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health—1872—3. 3
Parrish of Saint George the Martnr Southwark
ANNUAL REPORT
MADE TO THE VESTRY
by the
MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH.
FOR THE YEAR ENDING LADY-DAY, 1873.
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen,
Four events have characterised the year now past, looked at simply from a sanitary
point of view; and that is all which concerns us here.
In it we have witnessed the passing away of an epidemic, which has been present
between two and three years, killing, disfiguring, blinding, and otherwise maiming thousands
upon thousands of the people of this country. In the year 1871 alone, it destroyed
in England above 23,000 persons, 7,876 of which persons lived in London.
The next event, is one of a negative kind, remarkable rather for its non-existence, and
which is, that no other epidemic has yet appeared to take the place of the one that has
disappeared. Experience has told us that, one epidemic treads hard upon the heels of
another, and we have never long remained free. A change in this monotonous procedure
may be at hand, and the land have rest.
The third noticeable thing is the passing of the Public Health Bill. This Bill bears
traces of the results of much labour and thought, and shows also that Government is no
longer heedless about the health and comfort of the people. The neglect of which duty, has
kept up our death rate, filled our homes with widows and orphans, crowded our Workhouses
and the gates thereof with paupers ; a neglect which has eaten like a canker into the heart of
our social system. The passing of this Bill, whilst on the one hand a source of satisfaction,
had connected with its passage through the House of Commons much that tends to abate
any great amount of enthusiasm. We should have reasonably expected that during
the discussion of a measure so important, fraught in such a variety of ways with the weal
or woe of the nation, that not a seat in the House would have been found vacant, except