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46
disease operating as a cause of death. The remaining
deaths of aged people were all of them certified as having
resulted from either accident or some well ascertained
disease.
Social Positions of the Deceased Persons.—As some
set-off to the excessive number of deaths of infants and
young children, it may be referred to with satisfaction
that the deaths amongst the artizan, labouring, and poorer
classes, collectively, were fewer by 29 than the number
recorded of the three classes above them collectively, the
relative proportion being 81 of the latter to 52 of the
former. In 1868 the proportion was 61 to 54.
Sickness and Mortality amongst the Out-door Union Poor.
—That portion of Table V. Appendix, relating to this
Sub-district, exhibits, at one view, the number of cases
treated, and the number of deaths from each class of
disease amongst the parochial poor, exclusively. The
number of cases of disease, accident, &c., treated during
the year appears to have been 495, and the number of
resulting deaths 20, giving a per centage of deaths to
cases treated of 4.0. This is very satisfactory, and, it is
submitted, fully demonstrates the efficiency of the means
adopted to prevent the invasion of the poorer localities by
disease of a severe and fatal character. The improved
drainage carried out of late in these localities has been
such as to convert some of the most notoriously unhealthy
neighbourhoods into places in which fatal diseases amongst
the indigent are now of rare occurrence.
Accidental, Violent, and Sudden Deaths.—In the last
Report it was observed as being somewhat singular that
all the Coroner's inquiries in 1868 (six in number) were
upon the remains of persons drowned, accidentally or
otherwise, in the river Thames. In the past year there
were nine of these investigations, resulting in the following
verdicts:-