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and improvements be steadily and from year to year persevered in, notwithstanding
a moderately good state of public health, sanitary reform will prove to be
the most valuable one that has ever been experienced by mankind.
" In the great objects which sanitary science proposes to itself, in the immense
amelioration which it proffers to the physical, to the social, and indirectly
to the moral condition of an immense majority of our fellow creatures, it transcends
the importance of all other sciences, and its beneficent operations seem
most nearly to embody the spirit and to fulfil the intention of practical Christianity."
STATISTICS OF THE TEAR.
During the fifty-three weeks ending on the 3rd January, 1858, the number
of deaths registered in this parish was 4,148, and the number of births 6,472.
To arrive at the real mortality amongst people fairly belonging to the
parish a number of corrections must be made. In the first place must be
deducted deaths in the Strand Union Workhouse, also those deaths in University
College and Royal Free Hospitals which were of persons recently coming out of
other parishes; whilst must be added deaths of St. Pancras people in a number
of hospitals, namely, the Middlesex, King's College, St. Mary's, Children's,
Bartholomew's, and London Fever Hospital, as well as of lunatics chargeable
to this parish dying in various lunatic asylums.
To obtain the actual mortality, moreover, the deaths must not be taken as
registered, in weeks, but according to the time of their occurrence. When all
these corrections are made, the mortality of St. Pancras during the year 1857
becomes 3,887.*
To determine the rate of mortality in the existing population it is necessary
to estimate the population living in the middle of 1857. This may be done
in two ways : one that adopted in my first monthly report, is to assume that
the population has increased since 1851 in the same ratio as it did between 1841
and 1851, in which case the population last year was 195,500; the other method
is to suppose that the rate of increase in the number of births gives the rate of
increase of the population; in this case we get a population something below
190,000.†
On either supposition the mortality per 1000 is not far from 20. On the
first hypothesis, of every 10,000 living 199-3 died, whilst on the second 204*6
died.
During the year 1856 the rate of mortality calculated on the same principles,
was a little lower, namely, 19-6 per 1000, or 196 out of every 10,000
living. The rate of mortality in the whole metropolis during 1857 was 22'5 per
1000. In the northern division of the metropolis, which includes Marylebone,
Hampstead, St. Pancras, Islington, and Hackney, the rate of mortality was
21*22 per 1000. In Holborn district the rate was 24 08 ; the Strand 24*4; in
St. Martins-in-the-Fields 24'77; in St. Giles 28'66 per 1000 ; and in Islington
* The number of deaths occurine from 1st January to 31st December in St. Pancras was 3790,
exclusive of those deaths in the University College and Royal Free Hospitals, which were of nonparishioners.
The number of those belonging to this Parish, who died in Institutions out of the
Parish, so far as I have been able to ascertain them were:—35 in Middlesex Hospital, 15 in
various Lunatic Asylums, 13 in King's College Hospital, 11 in St. Bartholomew's, 10 in the
Hospital for sick chrildren, Great Ormond Street; 6 in the London Free Hospital, 5 in the
Charing Cross Hospital, and 1 at the Forest Gate Schools.
t The population is supposed to be increasing by about 5,000 per annum at the present time
During last year the excess of births over deaths was 2324, and in addition to this increase, thera
were probably more than as many other inhabitants added by immigration.