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37
Sickness and Mortality amongst the Out-door Union Poor—Infant
Mortality.
A most favourable rate of mortality amongst the pauper population of
this parish is exhibited in Table V., Appendix. Not only was there a
less amount of sickness in 1860 amongst this class than in any year since
1856, but an unusually small percentage of deaths in the number of cases
treated. In comparison with the previous year the amount of pauper
sickness was small, viz., 431 cases against 675. Of the 431 cases in the
past year, 14 only resulted in death, or rather over 3.7 per cent. ; and
what is a still more gratifying fact, but one death from zymotic disease
was registered as having occurred amongst the union poor of this subdistrict,
during the entire year ! This one death, the result of typhoid
fever in a child, occurred in a vety confined and ill ventilated court
(Pepper Alley) where with the utmost care it was found impossible to
secure to the patient the needed amount of pure air.
The diseases which have hitherto proved most fatal to the children of
the poor (Croup No. 12, Table V., Appendix), ended fatally in but 4
instances in 1860 against 8 in 1859. The destruction of frail infant life
amongst the poor is well known to be large in most localities where
manufacturing or field labour is in much demand, and this arises from
causes that are obvious enough when it is considered how many mothers
are employed in such labour. In 1856, the first year in which a sanitary
report was rendered, there died in this sub district 25 infants under 1
year, against 15 at the same age, recorded in the present table. The
ratio of deaths of all classes under 10 years of age to the mortality at all
ages, is in the present l-eturn, 27 in a total of 86 ; in that of 1856 (five
years since) it was 45 in 92. This large difference—a difference very
gradually arrived at—greatly favours the conclusion that the sanitary
works executed in this parish since the Metropolis Local Management
Act came into operation, especially those carried out in the poorer
neighbourhoods, have tended, in no small degree, to the saving of life, as
well as depriving disease of much of its former virulence.
My daily experiences, in common with those of my colleagues, have
long produced the conviction that to obtain the full benefits to be derived
from sanitary legislation, " Pauperism," (to use the words of a
& much admired living writer), " is the corner where we must begin—the
levels all pointing thitherwards—the probabilities all clearly lying
there." And the fact, that 72 per cent. 0] all paupers become such through