View report page

50
inations in this place, and dreadfully inconvenient it is.
There is no light except through the door which opens
into the yard which the customers are free to use. There
is scarcely room indeed to get round the body, and one is
dependent on the kindness of the Landloi'd for any
necessaries required during the performance of these examinations.
I must here hear testimony to the civility
and obliging disposition of the proprietor of this Tavern.
1 trust that the negociations pending between the Board
and the Ecclesiastical Authorities will soon be favorably
completed, for all are agreed there could not possibly be a
more suitable place for a Mortuary than the church yard
at the back of the Parish Church. The Islington Mortuary,
I may observe, is so placed. In the case of Eattersea,
looking at the close proximity of the church yard to the
river, where bodies are continually being picked up and
brought ashore at the draw dock, it is thought a better
position could not possibly be found. The painful scenes
of bodies so found, being carried or carted through the
streets to the said Clock-house Inn would then be avoided,
as would also, in the cases of the poor, the making of postmortem
examinations in rooms where people are born,
sleep, live and die, the oidy operating table being the
turned up coffin, or its lid. It would also be very desirable
if a chamber for the disinfection of clothes and bedding, &c.,
could at the same time be brought into operation, for there
is no doubt that the purification of such articles by heat,
forms an effectual means of preventing the spread of
epidemic diseases, no other means of disinfection being
efficient.
Births.—The births registered during the year were
1,311, G7G being of males, and 635 of females ; the birthrate
is therefore 40·8 per 1000 persons living, and gives a
natural increase to the population by births over deaths,
of 625.
Vaccination.—The number of Infants vaccinated at
the station in West Battersea during the year was 609, no
persons having presented themselves for re-vaccination