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It will be perceived that in this table a comparison in respect to the
number of deaths is intended to be shown not only one year with an
other during the five years in which the new act has been in operation,
but with 1844, a period 16 years removed from the year I am now reviewing,
when the population of the parish was estimated at nearly 2000
less than at present. By comparing the numbers under the two years,
1859-60, it will be seen that no less than 33 lives were saved in favour
of the latter period, and what is equally satisfactory a less number of the
labouring class died in 1860 than in the preceding year by 25. Further,
it must not only be admitted that a total mortality of 89 in 1844 was a
large one, relatively to the then population, but that the labouring class
contributed in undue proportion to the register of that year, seeing that
21 more of that class are to be found upon such register than at a period
16 years later, -†-
which the authorities are making in the removal of unhealthy influences. If we possessed
no such hospital, it is clear, that although in the year under review there would
have been a leas number of inhabitants upon which to have calculated the death-rate,
on the other hand there would have been less deaths by 8—or 78 instead of 86—to record
in this report. Four deaths which may be fairly attributed to old age, and two to
violence, being withdrawn from the total, would still further reduce the rate of mortality
from disease alone.
* The year 1844 was chosen for this comparison for two reasons—that it was not only
one in which the sub-district appeared to be comparatively free from those influences
known to propagate diseases, particularly epidemics, but that it was a year the calculations
in respect to whieh 1 had already at hand, having procured them for the purposes
of a lecture on sanitary matters, delivered in Putney in 1848, the year previous to the
first outbreak of cholera.
† The increase observable in the number of deaths amongst the labouring population
in the two years 1858 and 1859, is very satisfactorily accounted for by those years having
been characterized by a most unusual prevalence of virulent diseases of the zymotic