View report page

32
classes, which must have the effect of rendering them better
members of society, more healthy, more useful, and more moral,
will bo fully and completely realised.*
GENERAL, REMARKS—CONCLUSION.
One of the most striking, and at the same time most satisfactory
results of the sanitation effected of late years in this sub-district,
has been the gradual lessening of the distance, so to speak, which
formerly existed in the death-scale applying to the labouring class
and that applying to the other three social divisions employed in
the mortality tables.
In the past year the deaths amongst the labouring classes exceeded
by only 10 the number registered as having occurred amongst
the three other classes collectively, the former furnishing 67, and
the latter 57. Before sanitary regulations came to be regarded as
equally essential to the promotion and preservation of the health
of the poor as of the more wealthy, the difference was as great as
is indicated by the difference between 66 and 23, that being the
ratio as ascertained in 1844.
Another, and a no less gratifying result of the same sanitation,
is the small percentage of deaths in the number of cases treated
amongst the out-door Union poor of this parish (vide Table V. Appendix).
Of 599 cases of disease and accident recorded in the
Medical Relief Book there were registered 24 deaths, which is
but 4 per cent of the cases treated. Not many years since, when
the Union poor were much fewer, less crowded together, but under
no kind of sanitary regulations, the per centage was infinitely
higher, since more died then of preventible diseases.
A very fair inference deducible from the two facts here referred
to, notwithstanding an occasional epidemic visitation suffered (as in
* The Registrar-General, speaking of the invasion of the faulty dwellings of the
poor by disease, calls such disease "a health inspector that speaks a language
which nobody can misunderstand; "and further he says— athe oversights, the
errors of persons who in responsible offices have charge of the health and lives of
men, are proclaimed aloud by this inexorable voice." A very natural desire then
to avoid any such "proclamation" of neglected responsibilities on my part, induces
me, in reference to the project of building new almshouses in this parish, to avail
myself of the present opportunity of placing on record the opinion which was solicited
of and given by me as a public sanitary officer—an opinion happily in accord with
that entertained by all the most eminent sanitarians, by every one of my colleagues,
and by the entire medical profession of the sub-district—that to furnish, as is proposed,
only one room worthy of being called such to each recipient of the charity,
is to perpetuate an evil of the greatest magnitude; and further, that it is (to use the
words employed by Dr. Letheby, in a letter recently addressed to me on the
subject) "to commit an act which nothing but absolute necessity, as limited means
or space, could possibly justify, since it is contrary to the first principles of sanitary
science."