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43
Speaking more particularly of Small Pox, I cannot
avoid expressing my deliberate opinion that much of the
suffering, and still more of the loss of life, may be justly
attributed to a defective Vaccination Act, an equally
defective Registration Act, and, above all, to the maniacal
teachings (to use no stronger term) of the anti-vaccinationists.
Ages at Death.—As many as 269 infants and young
children, between birth and 10 years of age, are noted in
the Mortality Table, whilst 145 persons of advanced life,
i. e., between 60 and 100 years, are set down as having
succumbed to either disease or accident.
The death of one poor hard-working woman, a laundress,
is recorded, and the deceased stated to have attained the
advanced age, within about a fortnight, of 102 years. She
is also known to have been in possession of most of
her faculties at the time of her death.
Disease and Mortality amongst the Union Poor.—
Table V. will show that 1,489 persons of the pauper class
submitted themselves to treatment for sickness and accident
during the year, and that of these cases 76 deaths
resulted—a percentage as low as could be expected, seeing
the many drawbacks in both illness and convalescence
to which this class of persons are necessarily exposed. Of
these 1,189 cases, there came under treatment the very
large number of 396 persons labouring under Small Pox,
and, as the table will show, 29 succumbed to the disease
within the Sub-district. How many were sent from this
Parish to one or other of the Metropolitan Small Pox
Hospitals, and had died in those institutions, I am unable
just now to determine, but I have been favoured with a
return from the Superintendent of the Stockwell Hospital
giving the result of 62 deaths of 364 cases of Small Pox
admitted into that institution from the entire Wandsworth