London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Wandsworth 1866
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Wandsworth District, The Board of Works (Clapham, Putney, Streatham, Tooting & Wandsworth)]
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as to the last. In the aggregate, that is to say, from
birth to 10 years of age, the numbers that have succumbed
are more by 2 in 1866 than in the previous year.
3. In respect to deaths from the Zymotic class of
diseases, two only appear on the register of 1866, above
the number recorded in the previous report.
4. Apart from the deaths registered as due to Choleraic
Disease, (Cholera and Diarrhoea,) which were 5 in number,
the six other principal epidemic maladies were much less
fatal in 1866 than in the previous year, if we except
Measles, to which 8 deaths are registered as being due, or
rather to Pneumonia, which the severity of the season
caused to follow the eruption in nearly all the cases that
had a fatal termination.
5. A further comparison of the table of 1865 with that
in the present report, exhibits the gratifying fact, that the
deaths resulting from diseases of the Tubercular class, have
very considerably diminished, and that whilst there is to
be noticed a very slight increase in the mortality from
Diseases of the Brain and Nervous System, the deaths from
Affections of the Lungs (exclusive of Phthisis) have been
less by one than in 1865, though rather over the average
of the previous 10 years. Seeing what an inclement winter
marked the year 1866, a much larger number of deaths
might have been anticipated from diseases of the Respiratory
Organs.
The deaths due to Pulmonary Phthisis were, in 1865, as
many as 24, but in the past year they fell to 13, which is
a much less number than has been registered for some
years past. During the previous 3 years, the deaths from
Phthisis were respectively 17, 15, and 24.
6. Considering the many and active influences always
at work in poor and crowde l neighbourhoods in intensifying
all diseases, the deaths amongst the working classes, compared
with the number recorded as having taken place
among the three classes above them, are not by any means
unusually disproportionate, 70 of the former to 51 of the
latter being the figures appearing in that part of the