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46
ISL 33
REPORT
on the
SANITARY CONDITION OF ST. MARY, ISLINGTON,
FOR JANUARY, 1864.
The deaths registered during the four weeks ending January 30th
amounted to 450. This number exceeds the corrected average (297) by
153. A similar excess, though not quite so great, occurred in the rest
of London.
Although the diseases of the zymotic class have had something to do
with this excess, their influence has been trifling when compared with
that of the severe frost which prevailed at the commencement of the
month, and which resulted in the deaths of a very large proportion of
our old people, as well as of persons whose vital powers, already reduced
by disease, could bear no further reduction without giving way. Hence
it is that on casting our eye down the column of diseases in Table I.,
we find every class, without exception, adding its quota, especially
from the chronic maladies, towards making up the excess. Thus
we find recorded the enormous number of 149 deaths from diseases of
the respiratory organs, and 27 from diseases of the heart, 47 deaths from
consumption, 19 from apoplexy and paralysis, 17 from abdominial
diseases, mostly chronic, and 11 from cancer. Twenty-two persons
are said to have died simply worn out with old age. Among the old
people the female part of the population suffered the highest mortality.
Out of the 154 persons over 60 years of age, who died during the month,
no less than 111 were females; but our female population over 60 years
of age is considerably in excess of that of London generally.
Of the zymotic class of diseases, croup and hooping cough have alone
been unusually fatal, and in both of these the respiratory organs are implicated,
so as to place the sufferer under an unfavourable influence on
the occurrence of extreme cold. Only 8 deaths from fever appear upon
the Table, and of these 4 are said to have been cases of typhus. Still wc
may congratulate ourselves on our comparative freedom from this disease
No. LXXXII.