View report page

10
spread of infectious diseases. I am frequently applied to for advice, what should
be done with bedding and clothes used by patients with fevers or small pox? I
can only tell these persons who apply to me, that such things as can be washed
should be purified by boiling and washing, that feathers may be purified at
bedding makers, and that other things must be burnt. This is very unsatisfactory,
because infected articles are conveyed through the streets, without
any precaution, and then mixed at the laundries and bedding makers with noninfected
articles, and many valuable things are burnt which might be saved
if a hot chamber were provided.
The Commissioners of Baths and Washhouses would do well to provide a
second establishment, in which there might be laundries of the ordinary kind,
as well as a distinct department for the purification of infected linen, such as I
have alluded to; it would be but a small additional cost to provide such a
department in an establishment where all the appliances for a washhouse already
exist.
The continuance of Small Pox in the Parish, as well as the frequent
occurrence of Typhus and Scarlet Fever, render such a plan as I have recommended
very advisable, even in an economical point of view.
The cost of Typhus Fever last year in St. Pancras, it is difficult to estimate.
As one item, there was a payment to the Fever Hospital of more than £300
for the patients sent there; then there were 59 deaths of adults, between 20 and
60 years of age, leaving, in a great many cases, families destitute and dependent
on parochial relief; besides those who died, a large number who recovered were
left so weak, as to be unable for many weeks to earn their livelihood. The
additional burden thrown on the rates by these cases is a most serious item.
The same remarks apply to Small Pox; more than £150 was paid for the
cases sent to the Small Pox Hospital, besides the cost of the cases treated in the
Workhouse, which numbered 63, between September 1st and December, 1866,
and 141 between 1st January and 25th April of this year. Then there died
during 1866, besides children and old people, 17 adults between the ages of 20
and 60 years, many of them leaving families dependent on the rates. At the
present time, every fresh case of Small Pox costs the Parish four guineas for
Hospital accommodation alone. I have no hesitation in saying that a considerable
number of cases could have been prevented by the adoption of such
precautionary measures as it is within your province now to institute.
The history of this last epidemic of Cholera,'affords ample proof of the value
of sanitary measures; at the East end of London where the main drainage was
incomplete, and the water supply was contaminated, the disease raged with an
intensity which has never been surpassed in this country; in the Southern
districts, where in previous epidemics it had been most virulent, but in which
the drainage and water supply had been greatly improved, the disease prevailed
with far less severity; in St. Pancras, and other districts similarly situated,
it was less severe than in 1854 and 1849, and its attacks were most severe in
places where sanitary measures had been incompletely carried out. In 1849,
the deaths from Cholera in St. Pancras, numbered 360; in 1854, they were 238;
and in 1866, 112.
The rate of mortality to every 10,000 of the inhabitants, was in 1849, 22;
in 1854, 13; and in 1866, it was only 5.3.
In London at large, the rate of mortality was 60 in 1849; 45 in 1854; and
18.4 in 1866.