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TO THE VESTRY OF SAINT MARY, ISLINGTON.
Gentlemen,
1. The expiration of a year has left me in possession of an accumulation of facts bearing
upon the Sanitary condition of your Parish, which could not have been conveniently
classified before, nor so usefully communicated to you as at the termination of such a period.
In the present Report, I shall confine myself to a statement of these facts, and to the
conclusions which, in some instances, appear legitimately to follow their acceptance, avoiding
as far as possible any mere expressions of opinion.
The numerical details have been thrown into Tables. The time and labour requisite for
the preparation of these will, doubtless, account satisfactorily for the rather late appearance
of the Report.
MORTALITY AND DEATH-RATE.
2. The number of Deaths which occurred in Islington, from January 1st to December
31st, 1856, was 2294. This does not include the deaths of strangers which took place in
the Hospitals situated in the Parish. It requires correction also for the deaths of patients
from Islington in the other General and Special Metropolitan Hospitals, in the Lying-in
Hospitals, and in the Lunatic Asylums. There is every reason to believe that this
correction will be as nearly accurate as it can be made, if we assume that the registered
deaths of Islington patients in these institutions bore the same proportion to the whole of
the deaths in them, as the population of Islington bore to the whole population of London
in 1851. The number which it will be requisite thus to add is 142. This will make the
corrected mortality 2436
3. The number of deaths which occurred in the West Sub-district was 1201, and in
the East, 1093. If we distribute the 142 Hospital deaths between the Sub-districts in
the proportion of the population of each, we shall have to add 74 deaths to the West,
making its more correct mortality 1275, and 68 deaths to the East, making the mortality
1161.
4. The Births which have occurred during the year are 4309, and if the reproductive
character of the population be the same as it was in 1851, the residents in Islington,
which these births will represent, would not be less than 135,000. I feel myself compelled
on this ground to abandon the hesitation which withheld me in my Preliminary Report
from assuming that the population has augmented since the last Census, in the same ratio
as in the ten years preceding it, and, subject to correction from the next Census, to calculate
the Death-rate for the year as not exceeding 18.9 per 1000 living. This death-rate will bear
most favourable comparison with that of the Metropolis generally (22 per 1090), as well as
with that of the Northern Districts taken together (21 per 1000). The death-rate differed
very slightly in the two Sub-districts, being about 18.8 per 1000 in the West, and 19.1 in
the East.
5. In Table 2 I have arranged the deaths as they occurred in each week of the year, from
December 30th, 1855, to December 27th, 1856; * and the mortality is also represented as it
occurred in the Diagram, which represents the relation borne by the mortality generally,
* This will not be found to correspond with my weekly tables of Mortality, nor yet with the numbers given
in my Quarterly Reports, inasmuch as these represented the deaths as they were registered—the only course,
for various reasons open to me, when recording the mortality at such intervals.