London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London

Wandsworth 1856

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Wandsworth District, The Board of Works (Clapham, Putney, Streatham, Tooting & Wandsworth)]

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Table: Like the plague of the 17th century, the cholera of the present was happily (more especially in 1848-9), much less fatal in Putney than it was in any other sub-district within the Union. Nor is this difference to be entirely accounted for by the difference in the amount of population, as will be readily seen by a reference to the subjoined table.

Like the plague of the 17th century, the cholera of the present was happily (more especially in 1848-9), much less fatal in Putney than it was in any other sub-district within the Union. Nor is this difference to be entirely accounted for by the difference in the amount of population, as will be readily seen by a reference to the subjoined table.

Sub-districts.Population, 1841.Deaths from Cholera in 60 Weeks, ending Nov. 24th. 1849.Ratio of Deaths in 10,000 Inhabitants.
Clapham12,10612099
Streatham, including8,834160182
Tooting and Balham
Wandsworth7,614105137
Battersea6,617117175
Putney4,684817

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The insertion of this table, constructed from authentic data, furnished
by Mr. Grainger, to the Board of Health, gives me a very fair opportunity
of congratulating the inhabitants of Putney upon the high sanitary position
which their sub-district maintained during a period of one of the moat
serious epidemic invasions of modern times. Had, however, the result of
this calculation been the reverse of what it is, it would have been equally
My duty to have stated the circumstance, and it is therefore I desire to be
understood as not by any means straining my statistics in order to elevate
my own locality at the expense of others. I state facts as I find them,
and I am of course better pleased when those facts are favourable rather
than unfavourable to the sub-district in which I must necessarily take an
especial interest.
II. Statistics of Sickness and Mortality, bearing upon the
Sanitary Condition of the Sub-district.
The duties devolving upon Medical Officers of Health may be said to
supply a continued stream of statistical information—information, the
utility of which rests chiefly upon the facilities it affords for practical
deductions. That the passage from facts to deductions is generally a
very perilous one I am fully aware, and I am equally sensible of the danger
of regarding inferences or assumptions from facts as part of the facts
themselves; but, inasmuch as facts without deductions would, in sanitary
matters especially, be comparatively worthless, it is well that this path
should be occasionally traversed, if it be only to mark the progress of the
science of preventive medicine, and to make manifest the improvements
actually realised through the application of that science.
First then, as to the mortality of the sub-district. During the year
1856, 92 persons, equally divided as to sex, died from all causes in
Putney; 13 from zymotic diseases, 18 from lung diseases, exclusive of
phthisis, 9 of phthisis, 11 of hydrocephalus, atrophy, scrofula, and convulsions
of children, 35 from all other diseases, and 6 of violence, privation,
and premature birth.
5 of the persons who died were of the age of 80 years and upwards,
18 between 60 and 80, 15 between 40 and 60, 9 between 20 and 40, and
45 under 20 years, of which latter 28 were infants under 1 year.