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32
REPORT
on the
SANITARY CONDITION OF SAINT MARY, ISLINGTON,
FOR SEPTEMBER, 1859.
No. XXX.
Two hundred and forty-nine deaths have been registered during the five
weeks just terminated. This is a number considerably in excess of the mean
of the last three years, viz.—205 deaths, even after every reasonable allowance
has been made for an increased population. The cause of the excess is
partly an outbreak of measles and scarlet fever; the former, chiefly in
Bowman's - place North, and the Queen's road, Holloway; the latter, in Payne
street and its neighbourhood, and in the streets adjoining the Caledonian
road ; partly to the reappearance, I regret to say, of diphtheria, and partly to
an unusual number of deaths (above the mean of September,) from infantile
convulsions and other diseases of the nervous system, and also of deaths from
violence. There were registered fourteen deaths from measles, twenty from
scarlet fever, and ten from diphtheria, which last constituted also a fatal
complication in one of the cases of measles, and in one of scarlet fever.
Scarlet fever and diphtheria both exhibited an increase at the same time, in
about the second or third week of the month. Among the deaths from
scarlet fever, is enumerated that of a medical gentleman in Highbury, who
contracted the disease in the discharge of his professional duties. Two of the
deaths from diphtheria occurred in an overcrowded house at 13, Adelaide
square.