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occurred under five years of age. The deaths in the four quarters
respectively were 70, 61, 166, and 105.
Small-pox was fatal in one case only.
Measles killed 38 children, of whom 35 were under 5 years of age.
Scarlet Fever and Diphtheria were fatal in 10 and 11 cases
respectively.
Whooping Cough was the cause of 44 deaths; forty under five
years of age.
Fever.—The deaths recorded were 41, viz., Typhus 6, Enterio or
Typhoid 27, amLsimple continued fever 8. I was unable to trace any
cases of Typhoid fever to poisoning by milk.
Diarrhœa was returned as the cause of death in 145 cases, or 51
above the (uncorrected) average in 10 years. One hundred and
twenty-nine of the victims of this disease were infants under two
years of age, 108 being less than a year old. Ten persons were
above 65, and six between the ages of 5 and 65. The mortality in
the four quarters was as follows:— first quarter 8, second 10, third
114, fourth 13. Twenty-four of the deaths occurred in the Brompton
Registration Sub-District and 121 in the Kensington Town District.
Diarrhœa, as so often before stated, is a summer and hot weather
disease, and its victims are for the most part the neglected infants of
the lower classes of the population.
Constitutional Diseases, including the orders Diathetic and
Tubercular, were returned in 468 cases; 115 under five years of age.
The only disease of the first order calling for special notice is Cancer,
which was fatal in 60 cases, of which 53 occurred between 35 and 85
years of age.
The Tubercular diseases were fatal in 393 cases; 114 under five
years of age. Scrofula was returned in 16 cases; Tabes mesenterica
in 32 cases; Phthisis (consumption) in 284 cases; Hydrocephalus
(water on the brain) and Tubercular meningitis in 61 cases. The
quarterly mortality from these diseases was as follows:— first quarter
107, second 108, third 82, fourth 96.
Local Diseases were returned as the causes of death in 1074 cases,
347 under five years of age.
Diseases of the Nervous system were fatal in 261 instances,—
including Apoplexy 69 (59 over 45 years of age), and Paralysis 51
(47 over 45 years of age). Epilepsy was fatal in 9 cases. "Brain
disease" (so returned) in 41 cases, and Convulsions in 77 cases, all
under five years of age, including 57 in the first year of life and 15
in the second. There is not a little difficulty, often, as to which of
several assigned causes of death should be entered in Table 3 : and in
no cases is this difficulty greater than with regard to the Diseases of
Children such as Atrophy, Debility, Hydrocephalus, Teething, and
Convulsions. Convulsions is returned, singly, in a very large number
of cases: but it appears in combination with the other diseases named
in an even larger number as a sequence of wasting diseases (tubercular),
teething, hydrocephalus, &c. I regard the "fit" in such cases as a
symptom of disease, and enter the death under the head of the primary
disease. In Table 4 (Appendix) an attempt has been made to group the