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28
gious state of any people, has, as regards our parish, been
attacked openly as excessive.* (See the Transactions of the
Social Science Association for 1860, p. 64.) In the year
ended April 1, 1859, the deaths of infants under one
year were 334 out of 2,288 births and 1838 deaths, or
about 15.5 per cent. of the births, and about 18 per cent.
of the deaths. In the year ended 31st March, 1860, they
were 365 out of 2,300 births, and 1,837 deaths; or not
quite 16 per cent. of the births, and 20 per cent. of the
deaths. In the year just ended they are 295, out of
2,119 births, or not quite 14 per cent. of the births, and
about 15.5 per cent. of the deaths.
Sickness. Number of cases relieved by Parochial and
Dispensary Medical Officers in the Hanover and May-fair
Sub-Districts 3,083. Of these, bronchitis and catarrh 475,
diarrhoea and dysentery 120, scarlet fever 44, diphtherite
4, fever usually slight 54, measles 37, whooping-cough 36,
chicken-pox 9, small-pox 10.
In the Belgrave Sub-District, during the year, 2,342
cases were treated by the Parochial Surgeons at St.
George's Hospital, the Royal Pimlico Dispensary, and
the St. Paul and St. Barnabas Dispensary, and at the
Workhouse, Little Chelsea. Of these, 13,320 were
patients at St. George's Hospital, leaving a remainder
of 10,112.
We find that the whole included 28 of small-pox, 71
of chicken-pox, 212 of measles, 160 of scarlatina, 110 of
* "St. George's, Hanover-square, with all its wealth, its splendour,
and really English comfort, is only a little less fatal to infants, than
Shoreditch, Bermondsey, or Lambeth."—Dr. W. T. Gairdner, loc. cit.
He takes his data from the Registrar-General's Reports, 1838—44, he
makes the infantile death-rate of our parish eleven times as high as the
general death-rate.