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22
MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON.
each ward of the City: it thus furnishes indirectly
the means for estimating the local population.
It will be noticed, that the more glaring inequalities
which I have adduced are in some degree due
to the epidemic of last year, which did not press
uniformly on all parts of the City. It may, however,
likewise be observed that the chief operation of that
epidemic was to exaggerate, but not importantly to
mis-represent, the features of each locality; that the
habitual sanitary proportions of districts to each
other were for the most part preserved; that (with
a qualification to which I shall presently revert) the
wards numbering fewest deaths last year numbered
also fewest this year.
In my last Report, when the cholera had scarcely
subsided, when men's minds were full of apprehension
on the subject, and when there was every
human probability (happily since refuted) that,
with the recurrence of autumn, we should again
suffer from its invasion, I was unwilling to dwell
too pointedly on the wonderful pertinacity with
which that disease fixes itself on particular localities,
and tends to re-appear in them on each new occasion
of its rise. Knowing that no extemporaneous
measures could counteract these local preferences
of the epidemic, I refrained from a course which
would have produced no good result (unless indeed
it had depopulated certain spots of the City) and
which might have caused unavailing and hurtful
alarm. Now, however, I think it right to tell you