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REPORT
ON THE SANITARY CONDITION OF THE SEVERAL PARISHES
COMPRISED IN THE WANDSWORTH DISTRICT,
FOR THE QUARTER THAT ENDED SATURDAY, 26th SEPTEMBER, 1857.
To the Board of Works for the Wandsworth District.
Gentlemen,
The number of deaths from all causes registered in the entire
district, in the quarter that ended 26th September of the present year
was 280; in the corresponding quarters of three preceding years
(excludiag for obvious reasons the cholera year of 1854,) the average
number of deaths was 244; but as the deaths in the quarter just
expired occurred in an increased population, this average has to bo
raised proportionally to such increase, in which case it becomes 268.
The returns of deaths, therefore, in the September quarter of the present
year exhibit an excess of 12 over the corrected average.
At first sight this calculation appears to place the health of the district
in a somewhat unfavourable light, but when it is considered that the
death-rate of the quarter just expired was greatly augmented by an
unusual mortality from diarrhoea and summer cholera (in all 62 fatal
cases), the small increase noted above will not excite so much surprise,
especially if it be borne iu mind that the excess is exactly balanced by
the register during the quarter of the unusual number of 12 deaths from
violence, suicide, &c., viz.: 5 from drowning, 1 from hanging, and
5 from wounds, fractures, and other injuries of the person. It should
also be recollected that the excessive death rate from diarrhoea during
the quarter was by no means confined to the Wandsworth District.
Much as we have to deplore this unusual mortality from one particular
disease, wc have the gratifying fact to place in the opposite scale, that
the number of deaths in the district during the same period, from most
of the other severe forms of zymotic disease, though occurring in an