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9
In after years, when sanitary improvements, now
only in contemplation or commencement, shall have
produced their legitimate results and rewards, these
tables may serve an important use. Indicating the
standard of public health within the City before
such works were achieved, and constituting a permanent
record of your starting-point, they will
qualify your successors to estimate the amount of
amelioration which your endeavours shall have
produced.
The details of your present sanitary condition, as
varying in different sub-districts of the City, and as
fluctuating in the several years and seasons of the
quinquennial period, are expressed in the figures of
these tables more compendiously and more clearly
than I could hope to convey them in words. Here,
therefore, I restrict myself to telling you very briefly
their general results.
The population of the City—about 130,000 persons,
has been dying during these five years at the
rate of about 24 per thousand per annum. The
sub-district rates which give this aggregate vary
from under 18 to above 29; the former death-rate
belonging to your healthiest locality—the northwest
sub-district of the City of London Union;
while the latter—more than 60 per cent higher—
mortality belongs to the north sub-district of the
West London Union. The lowest death-rate
hitherto attained in this country for a considerable
population, during a term of seven years, has been