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This is a high rate of mortality, inasmuch as it gives
about four deaths per week in excess of the mortality of the
last ten years; and it is in particular high by comparison
with the corresponding weeks of 1856.
During those weeks of 1856, the entire number of deaths
in the parish, exclusive of those in the workhouse at Little
Chelsea and in St. George's Hospital, was 298 ; in 1857, it
was 353. The deaths of children under five years, were 105
in the thirteen weeks of 1856, and 143 in 1857. The births,
during the corresponding weeks, were 512 in 1856, and 521
in 1857.
This excess of mortality we believe to be chiefly due to
the three most prevalent zymotic diseases, scarlet fever,
measles, and typhus, or common fever; the deaths from
which were 17 in the last quarter of 1856, and 48 in the
corresponding quarter of 1857. Acute diseases of the lungs
were also very fatal.
The deaths from consumption are 46; from other lung
disorders, 86; from premature birth, 11; from old age, 16.
Diarrhoea, which, with the allied diseases, dysentery and
cholera, destroyed 64 lives during the preceding quarter,
was this quarter fatal in four cases only, and these were in
the Belgrave Sub-district. The greater liability of this Subdistrict
to these maladies cannot now be owing to any
difference in the water used; moreover, out of the 64 deaths
in the summer quarter, 56 were of infants under one year,
many of them at the breast: neither can it be owing to
greater poverty, or overcrowding; for no part of the Outwards
is so densely peopled as some parts of the In-wards.
It is probably owing to the lower level, and may cease when
the Thames is embanked and purified, and some of its inlets
filled up.