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for each child under 12 years of age. This is about the amount of space
required by the Police Surveyors, appointed under the Common Lodging House
Act, for bedrooms not occupied at all in the day-time, and in which sick
persons are not allowed to remain. Very few proceedings have been hitherto
taken under the overcrowding clause in this Parish, but the Sanitary Committee
heve recently instituted proceedings in a number of cases. The presence
of Typhus amongst us for the last three years and a half, with a tendency to
increase rather than to abate, together with the presence of it in an aggravated
form in Russia, accompanied by another epidemic (relapsing fever) which has
not been seen in London since 1854, must be taken as clear indications to all
local authorities to carry out sanitary measures to the full extent to which the
legislature enables them to proceed.
In all rooms in which infectious disease occurs a thorough cleansing and whitewashing
should be enforced, and in houses let out in separate tenements,
periodical whitewashing is required, even though no disease of an infectious
nature has occurred. The passages and walls of the rooms in these houses
should not be papered, unless the landlord is prepared frequently to renew the
paper. There is one thing of much importance, which it is not easy to enforce,
that is, the cleansing of bedding and body linen in cases of infection. The
opportunities for washing amongst the poor are very defective, many having
no place for the purpose besides the one room in which they all eat, drink, and
sleep, in which their children are born, where they are ill, and die.
Amongst 191 violent deaths from accident or negligence, 9 occurred on the
railroads, 19 by conveyances, on the public roads, 4 from injuries by horses,
5 by falls from scaffolding, 21 from burns, 11 from scalds; 33 children were
suffocated in bed, 4 children and 1 adult were choked by food. One child was
accidentally poisoned by an overdose of medicine. Five persons committed
suicide by poison, two using oxalic acid, one acetate of lead, one laudanum,
and one taking prussiate of potash. There were 57 more accidental deaths
in 1864 than in 1863, three more homicidal, and six less suicidal.
Of the deaths from burning, 3 were ascribed to the use of crinoline, 10
were in children from two to six years of age, an age at which children able
to walk, but not old enough to take care of themselves, are often left in rooms
with a fire, without any attendant or fireguard. The deaths from scalding
were in ten cases of children from one year to three years of age. Four persons
committed suicide by cutting their throats, 5 by hanging themselves, and 2 by
drowning. Eleven newly born children were murdered. There were 27 deaths,
the causes af which are not specified or ill-defined.
Infantile mortality is always regarded as a test of the sanitary condition of
a place. In 1864 there were 1236 deaths in children under the age of one
year ; the number of children living at that age may be assumed as 7200, so
that of every hundred living at that age, rather more than 17 died.
Of every ten thousand persons living at all ages, one hundred and nine
children died under five years of age; at the census of 1851, the numbers
living under five years of age were in the proportion of 125 to 1000, so that
the death-rate amongst children under five years may be assumed as about 87
to every 1000 living at that age.
Some parts of the Parish exhibit a higher mortality than others. From the
impossibility of ascertaining the present population of different parts, the rate