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9
This Table forcibly illustrates the influence of disease as a cause of pauperism.
The total admissions into the Workhouse during the quarter were 407 ; the admissions
from sickness — each case of which is regularly reported to me, together with
the locality whence it was brought—were 197, or as nearly as possible one-half. It
would be an inquiry full of practical interest, to trace out the various causes
of the diseases which are the immediate causes of pauperism, and their relative
proportions. Whilst intemperance, idleness, immorality, unwholesome food, and
destitution, operate powerfully, there can be no doubt as to the far greater
influence of evils which it is in our power to mitigate or remove. A large
proportion of our population lives under conditions which render the preservation
of health almost impossible. These conditions are centred in the dwellings
of the poorer classes. An atmosphere empoisoned by exhalations from cess-pools,
privies, sewers, and the pest-stratum, which is charged with every element of foulness,
forms the air supply from without. Within, new sources of infection are added
from dirt and animal excretions. The air, thus doubly empoisoned, is pent up
in ill-constructed rooms destitute of all efficient means of ventilation. I refer to
this great source of disease, because howsoever obvious and certain, its importance
is underrated. It is held with great pertinacity in some quarters, that the great
preventive remedy of fever, is the diversion of sewage from the Thames. That th e
dwellings immediately exposed to the exhalations from the mud-banks, left at
every ebb, are especially unwholesome, is indeed amply proved. But we have seen
from the preceding statistical analyses, that the deaths from fever in the East
division, including Shoreditch, which was high and far removed from the river,
were considerably more than in the South, which is within its immediate influence.
It is therefore in strictly local conditions that we must seek for the disease-producing
causes. Disease must be pursued in its abiding-places; it can only
be expelled by the vigorous application of sanitary remedies at the very spot
where it takes its rise.
That the sewage-matter received into the stream of the Thames is
not in itself, and so long as it is not deposited on the banks, a fertile source of
fever, is further proved by the following facts. The population actually living on
the bosom of the Thames, whose every breath is a distillation from its waters, is not
especially liable to fever ; not so much so, indeed, as the population whose dwellings