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which''these numbers indicate. Domestic Servant* die to the extent of one-fourth
from phthisis, especially in the earlier ages; at later periods of life from bronchitis.
The deaths from diseases of the nervous system other than apoplexy, that is from
paralysis and diseases of the brain and spinal cord, are high ; and they also seem to
suffer severely from disorders of the digestive system. Every dispensary physician
is aware of all this. And the explanation lies in the hard life they commonly lead,
hard work, daily fatigue, insufficient rest, unhealthy sleeping rooms (a room on the
basement, or underground, or an unventilated garret, and commonly the worst room
in the house being allotted to the maid-of-all-work), and not always a very liberal diet,
completing in their case what an infancy and youth passed under unfavourable sanitary
conditions had left unfinished. As regards the large proportion of deaths from the
miasmatic diseases, small-pox, fever, &c., the parallelism with the mortality of
labourers (both mostly proceeding from the same rank of life) is remarkable. The
deaths from fever are especially noticeable; experience seems to show that domestic
servants suffer largely from "enteric fever," from their disproportionate exposure to
drain emanations at the lower part of the houses they live in. Few sinks in the
kitchens, even of good houses, are properly trapped, and the servants are the first to
suffer from the neglect. An inefficient bell-trap is usually all that is provided.*
Where houses are built upon rubbish, filling in the site of former excavations,
another source of malaria and specific poison is provided for the denizens of the
kitchen. We all know what this rubbish consists of. Seven of the deaths recorded
were from " puerperal fever." Laundresses seem to suffer to about the same extent
from fever, probably partly due to their residences and partly to the clothing of fever
patients which they come into contact with. Their most remarkable mortality, however,
is from chronic bronchitic, and heart diseases, the direct result of their
business. The deaths of our Schoolmistresses are too few to comment upon.
SANITARY WORK OF THE YEAR.
All that relates to dwelling-houses and the improvements effected in them,
appears on Table XV. The number of houses systematically inspected was 1,333.
I may state, as a general fact, that during the past year the inspectors have found
less overcrowding than heretofore. I have had occasion to interfere in one instance
where a number of girls were crowded into two small rooms to work at flower making,
on account of typhus fever spreading among them. On the occasion of the annual
licensing, all the slaughter-houses and cowsheds in the parish were personally inspected
by myself, and those that I objected to by the Sanitary Committee also. The number
of slaughterhouses licensed was 108, and the number of cowsheds 71. Licences were
refused to seven slaughter-houses (in four instances where a licence had formerly been
granted), on the ground of their being no longer necessary, the shops to which they
were attached having been closed and the locality being objectionable. Several cowkeepers,
whose sheds and yards had during the year been frequently subject to
complaints of uneleanliness, although their licences were granted, were warned that
if similar complaints arose a second time the licence will be withdrawn. In one
* There ought always to bo a " syphon-trap" at the junction between tho pipe descending
from the sink and the drain.