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sented to the several Medical Officers of Health of the Metropolis
the original manuscript returns of the causes of all deaths registered
within their districts during the previous week, these returns being
forwarded by the sub-district registrars to Somerset House, and
forming the basis of the Registrar-General's "Weekly Return."
For this duty the sub-district registrars received no remuneration.
The necessity of similar information being supplied to
Provincial Medical Officers of Health arose out of the passing
of the Public Health Act, 1872, but no such returns being in
existence, the information was not forthcoming. Hence many
difficulties, into which I need not enter. Suffice it to say that
in the Public Health Amendment Act provision was made for
the payment of the sub-district registrars by Provincial Sanitary
Authorities for information of a precisely similar character
to that which had hitherto reached the Metropolitan Medical
Officers without expense to the Local Boards. On the
passing of the last-named Act, the London registrars, feeling themselves
entitled to remuneration for the "secondary use," by the
Medical Officers of their manuscript returns, applied to the RegistrarGeneral
on the subject, and he, in turn, requested the Society of
Medical Officers of Health to bring the question of payment
on a proposed scale before the several Vestries and District
Boards. The Society, however, declining the somewhat invidious
task, the Registrar-General addressed a similar application to the
Local Boards. In the result very few of them consented to the
requisition of the Registrar-General, who thereupon gave notice
to the Medical Officers that after an appointed day in October he
should no longer forward the weekly returns; and he was as good
as his word. Greatly to their credit, Messrs. Barnes and Hume
spontaneously put themselves in communication with me, promising
to send me a duplicate copy of the returns as before; and this
they did, until, some time afterwards, a fair and mutually satisfactory
arrangement was completed between your Vestry and these
gentlemen. The upshot is that I obtain the returns early on
Monday morning instead of on Wednesday evening, and I am
thus enabled to tabulate the vital statistics up to a period within
four days of the date of my monthly reports, instead of eleven
days, as under the former arrangement. Additional information
of value is also supplied by the registrars, and they continue to
forward from day to day, on special forms, notice of any deaths
that may have been registered from small-pox, scarlet fever,
diphtheria, typhus, enteric, and simple continued fevers, and
puerperal fever, &c., so that no time is lost in taking the necessary
steps after fatal cases of these infectious diseases.
I have to express my obligations to the officers of the Board of
Guardians for information of cases of infectious diseases, &c.; and
I am happy to testify my sense of the cordial support I invariably
receive from the Sanitary Inspectors, and of the efficient manner
in which their onerous, often delicate, and always important duties