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26 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON.
your own jurisdiction, you will observe its fatality
in two especial directions. First, in the line I
have indicated to you, northward from Blackfriars
bridge, in a band of two or three hundred yards
width: there, in the parallelogram which lies along
the main road, from Stonecutter street to Bridewell
Hospital, were 76 deaths; there, in the little clump
of houses forming the angle of Farringdon street
and Holborn hill, were 17 deaths ; there, in a square
space behind twenty-seven shop-fronts in Fleet
street, were 57 deaths; there, in the small parish of
St. Ann's, Blackfriars, were deaths at the rate of
25 to every thousand of its population. This was
incomparably the most afflicted portion of your territory.
Those who are acquainted with the ancient
geography of the City will readily conjecture a reason
; they will remember when "the course of water
running at London under Old-bourne bridge and
Fleet bridge, into the Thames, was of such bredth
and depth that ten or twelve ships, navies at once
with merchandises, were wont to come to the foresaid
bridge of Fleet, and some of them unto Oldbourne
bridge;" they will remember how this broad
river (like the Thames of our day) was thronged on
both sides with population; how (again like the
Thames) it was a draining river, probably with wide
banks of putrefying mud; how many fruitless attempts
were made to cleanse and preserve its
channel; but how (in Stow's day) "the brooke, by
meanes of continuall incrochments upon the banks,