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to the
VESTRY OF ST. MARY, ISLINGTON.
Gentlemen,
The Life Balance Sheet of your Parish for 1875 shows that
your losses and gains leave you 4376 lives to the good; or in other
words, 4656 deaths and 9032 births have been registered in the
Parish of St. Mary, Islington, during the year.
Further, your marriage rate is 17.6 per 1000.
This statement will be received by different people in very
different ways. Questions such as these are suggested—What may
be learnt from this statement of death and life ?—1s there any
practical teaching to be derived from it, or are there any facts deducible
from it, which may guide us in the future, so that, by an extra
expenditure, or by extra attention, we may increase our credit and
decrease our debit account ?—Where are our weak points, and how
may they be strengthened ?—Are we in a better sanitary state now,
than we were twenty years ago, before all this stir was made about
sanitary matters ?—Are we with our elaborate drainage schemes and
sanitary organizations, a healthier race than our forefathers, each
being in the matter of nuisanc'es, "a law unto himself," and all of
whom lived within a few yards of a score of cesspools,—which had
to be emptied by the night-man when from insufferable smell they
could be borne no longer, but without any peremptory Vestry
notices, or orders from a Sanitary Department?
I am quite prepared to find that some, into whose hands this
report will fall, will never dream of asking these or any other
such questions. Probably they will regard the report of the Health
Officer as a very useless piece of trouble on his part, or at any rate,
if they do not consider that point (which is not at all unlikely), they
will say it is a very unnecessary expense. Parliament in its
wisdom, or unwisdom, however, as the case may be, has required
the officer to take the trouble of writing it.