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REPORT.
To the Board of Works for the Wandsworth District.
Gentlemen,
In conformity with a recent order of your Board, we have
the honour to submit the customary statistics of disease and mortality
relating to our respective sub-districts, together with brief local summaries
of the principal sanitary events of the year 1858.
Besides these summaries we present, as usual, an appendix of tables
having reference to the entire district, so as to furnish both local and
general information, upon which we trust the Board may be able not
only to base future measures of improvement, but to form a correct
judgment of the effects upon the public health of those already completed
and in full operation.
It may be here observed that the amount of fatal epidemic disease in
the entire district, during the past year, was considerably in excess of
that of the two preceding ones. This excess is found to be chiefly due
to scarlet fever, the deaths from which epidemic give to the Begistrar
General's Returns for 1858 a number six times greater than in 1857,
and absorb 8 per cent. of the total mortality of the year.
Adopting a necessary correction of the Registrar General, as to the
total number of persons dying and being registered within the several subdistricts
during the year (from 1st January to 31st December inclusive)
it is found that the mortality from all causes, and amongst all classes in
the entire district, amounted, in 1858, to 1264. It will be seen by
reference to Table I., Appendix, that this is a much higher rate than
that of either 1856 or 1857, which were years in which the district was
unusually exempt from epidemic disease; but that, as compared with
the corrected average of the preceding 10 years, there is exhibited a
decrease in favour of 1858 of no less than 42 deaths.
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