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manner in which throughout this period they assisted me by their efforts and by
their opinions upon points of practical detail.
Scarlet Fever prevailed also as an epidemic through the year. Between January
and June, from 43 to 47 cases occurred monthly in the practice of those Officers and Institutions
which furnish me with returns. In July there were 80 cases, and the numbers
varied between this and 90 cases until November, when they fell to 30, 55 occurring
in December. The total number of cases was 072 and the total mortality 392. This
disease has also (like small pox) been more prevalent and more fatal than in 1859,
when the cases returned to me were 472, and the deaths amounted to only 210.
Unhappily we do not possess against this disease the same protection that we have
against small pox, nor will the most anxious precautions prevent in all cases the access of
the subtle poison of scarlet fever to families; and when it does enter them its fatality
is determined very much by family constitution. At the same time, as I have frequently
pointed out, unsanitary conditions very decidedly aggravate the malady,
while carelessness during convalescence brings about secondary diseases, which carry
off such as the primary disease may have spared.
SANITARY WORK OF THE YEAR.
7. Table IV represents the sanitary work of the year, as relates to the inspection and
amendment of dwellings. A great part of these amendments were carried out as usual
without the necessity of legal proceedings, but in several instances summonses were
taken out to enforce the disuse of unhealthy underground rooms for sleeping purposes,
the abatement of over-crowding, and the cleansing and draining of dwelling-houses. I
must allude to one of these cases. In the rear of Nos. 13, 14, 15, and 10, Brandstreet
is a small common court-yard, at the end of which has been erected recently,
and without notice to the Vestry, a row of small single roomed huts, originally, it is said,
built for wash-houses, but really adapted to use as separate dwellings. They are in
direct contravention of the 29th Section of the Building Act—one of its sanitary Sections.
Each was occupied by a single family, the capacity of the rooms being
sufficient only to allow about 150 cubic feet of breathing space per head. As this
condition of things was the fault of an officer of the Metropolitan Board of Works, if
of any one, a representation was made to them. No steps, however, were taken by
the Board to enforce the law, and still these places continue to be occupied.
Small Pox broke out in these huts, as might have been anticipated, with fatal results.
Proceedings taken by the Sanitary Committee, under the Nuisances' Removal Act,
have not been able to touch the over-crowding, nor yet to remove the principal grounds
of complaint, because each single roomed hut of about 700 cubic feet capacity constitutes
a house occupied by no more than a single family.
Is there really no remedy for all this ?
8. The house improvements, carried out under the supervision of our Inspectors,
are detailed in Table IV. The sanitary condition of 750 houses altogether was
inquired into during the year, and, in addition to such amendments being effected as
the re-construction and repair of drains, the abolition of 72 cesspools, the panning,
trapping and supply of water to 209 privies and closets, the construction and covering
of dust bins, paving and draining of wet yards, improvements in the domestic water
supply of 152 houses, and house cleansing and ventilation, over crowding of tenements
has been abated in 53 instances, and 33 under-ground rooms, unhealthily