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TO THE VESTRY OF ST. PANCRAS.
Gentlemen,
Haying now held the appointment of Medical Officer
of Health in this Parish for a period of one year, it may be well to
give you a summary of the Vital Statistics of the district during the
year, also a short account of the works performed in the sanitary
department, and bring before your notice a few of the more important
evils which still operate against the public health, at the
same time suggesting such remedies as to me appear practicable.
STATISTICS OF THE YEAR.
In 41 weeks of the year 1856, the registered mortality was below
the corrected average, and in 11 weeks only was it above the average.
In each quarter of the year the mortality was below the average.
During the entire year the mortality was nearly 13 per cent, below the
corrected average of the ten preceding years, and about 12 per cent,
below the mortality of 1855. In 1856 there were registered in St.
Pancras 3,857 deaths, whilst in 1855 there were 4,336. The rate
of mortality last year was little more than 20 to every thousand living,
whilst in the nine preceding years the mortality was at the rate of
24 to every thousand. In London at large the proportion in 1856 was
22 to a thousand.
In Table I. are given the births and deaths in each sub-district
of the parish, together with the deaths of children under 5 years of
age during the four quarters of the year; also for the whole year the
proportion of deaths under 5 to the number born; the number of
deaths from 6 epidemic diseases (a class of diseases on which sanitary
improvements exert especial influence); the proportion which this
number bears to every 10,000 living; and the proportion which it
bears to the deaths from all causes. Also there is given the ratio
which the total mortality (corrected, as explained in a note to the
table) bore to every thousand persons estimated to be living in
each sub-district.
I have thought that the comparison of the number of children
dying under 5 years of age with the number born, would give a
valuable guide to the relative salubrity of the sub-districts. This
plan appears to be less liable to fallacy than the comparison of infant
mortality either with the total numbers of deaths or with the estimated
population, from the impossibility of determining the relative