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36
REPORT
on the
SANITARY CONDITION OF ST. MARY, ISLINGTON,
FOR APRIL, 1863.
No. LXXIII.
The mortality in the Parish, although still very high, has not been
quite so great as it was in the month of March. The deaths registered
were 300, and had the death rate of March continued they would
have amounted to 338. Still they were greatly above the average for
April. The mean mortality of April for seven years past, corrected
for increased population, would have produced 253; the actual deaths
were 47 above this number. Of the 300 deaths, 94, or nearly a third,
were due to maladies of the Zymotic class. In March there were
recorded five deaths from Erysipelas, and seven from Rheumatic
Fever; there are none recorded from these diseases in the mortuary
table for April. The deaths from Hooping Cough also have fallen
from 41 in five week to 18 in four weeks, the weekly numbers being
3, 6, 4, 5. The deaths from Fever also have fallen from 17 to 10, the
latter number including those of two nurses who died from Typhus
in the London Fever Hospital. The diseases which have maintained
their high fatality have been Small Pox and Scarlet Fever.
Small Pox has most distinctly increased amongst us uring the
month. In the five weeks of March 40 new cases were recorded upon
the books of the Dispensaries and of the Parochial Officers. In the
four weeks of April the number rose to GO; nor doe3 this include all
the cases that have come to my knowledge among the same class of
our inhabitants, while I have heard of very numerous cases occurring
in the families of those who are in a position to engage the services
of private practitioners. In both classes of persons it has been no
rare event for t hree or four persons to be ill with Small Pox in a single
family. The intelligent portion of the public are alive to the danger,
and both primary and secondary vaccinations are being actively procsedel
with. At the same time there is, especially among the poor, a
cla93 of persons who obstinately reject the offers of vaccination made
to them. In one house which I visited in Brand Street there was, in
a filthy room, a woman with three children, who were at the height of