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5
the Wandsworth District, which embraces, with one exception,
(Lewisham) a much larger area than any other district
under the Metropolis Local Management Act, cannot be considered
as any indication of an actual or persistent decline of the favourable
condition of the public health noted in former reports.
A reference to Table IV. in the Appendix will shew that the
per centage of deaths in 1861 from the seven principal forms of
zymotic disease to the total deaths was 18.4, whilst the average of
the six preceding years was 15.7, thus giving an excess to the
past year of 2.7 only, notwithstanding the unusual prevalence and
fatality of this class of maladies in almost every one of the
sub-districts.
It was remarked in the last year's summary of the health of the
entire district that " the higher the death-rate in a sub-district, the
greater was the proportion of deaths from epidemic diseases in
relation to the total deaths." This fact cannot, it is considered, be
put too frequently or too prominently forward, since it indicates, in
the clearest manner possible, the necessity for persevering exertions
in order to place all the sub-districts in an equally good sanitary
condition, so that no one locality may be suffered to lose caste by
comparison with others in which more attention may have been
paid to sanitation, and to the carrying out of such improvements as
are calculated to restrain the upward tendency of the death-scale.
The same melancholy feature which attaches to almost all tables of
mortality, from whatever large community they may emanate, is,
unfortunately, not absent from the one appended to this report
(Table I.), viz., the great proportion of deaths of infants and young
children between birth and ten years of age to the total number at
all ages.
Of the 1,393 deaths which occurred in the district during the
past year, as many as 666 infants and children were registered
before reaching the age of ten years, viz.:—375 under one year,
214 between one and five years, and 77 between five and ten years.
As by far the greater number of these deaths occurred in the
families of the labouring poor, it still further indicates the direction