View report page

12
moral order larger masses of our fellow-creatures.
This can only be effected by helping them in the first
instance to more material comforts in their homes, and
by teaching the coming generations the value of selfdependence,
and the art of helping themselves in difficulties,
by well-developed habits of thought and foresight.
January, 1857.—The number of deaths for the
month of January was 84, which is much beyond our
average. It is caused by the return of a large number
of deaths requiring inquests: these are not returned at
the time of their occurrence, but are allowed to accumulate
for months.
I refer to the tables for the details of deaths, and to
these will in future be added a table of prevailing
diseases. Measles and hooping-cough are the most prevailing
epidemics. The deaths from hooping-cough
have been very numerous, and there can be no doubt
that this disease is much more fatal than it ought to be,
especially in poor localities; indeed, the principal mortality
of the hooping-cough is among the children of
the working-classes. In this disease it is a great point
to keep a child in a room where the temperature is
equable, especially at such a season as this, when inflammatory
conditions of the lungs are apt to supervene.
Unfortunately this is almost impossible where a family
has only one room: hence the mortality of hoopingcough
among the poor. I have often thought that no
greater boon could be offered to the labouring classes
than the establishment of a ward in all our workhouses
for sick children. We may easily conceive the difficulties
in such a family, with two or three children
cast down with measles or hooping-cough, it often
entailing distress and poverty from which it never
recovers.
February, 1857.—The number of deaths for the