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8
156,250. The sub-districts present considerable differences which
should always be borne in mind in any comparison of their vital
statistics. Speaking generally, the population of Brompton contains
a large proportion of the rich, or at least well-to-do classes for whose
accommodation many houses of a palatial character have been
erected within the last few years. The Town sub-district, on the
other hand, comprises a much larger relative proportion of the poorer
classes, especially in the north and north-western parts of the
parish. These poorer classes have one advantage over the same
classes in other parts of the Metropolis, in that they mostly live in
well-constructed houses, obviously designed with a view to occupation
by more wealthy people. It is scarcely too much to say,
that there are miles of streets of such houses inhabited by a class of
persons who, in the older parts of the Metropolis, would find shelter
in dwellings that, by comparison, might be termed squalid. But
rents are high, and high rents mean over-crowding, which is sure, in
the long run, to raise the death-rate wherever it exists : and, indeed,
there is reason to believe that it has already led to a greater variation
in the rate of mortality in different sections of the parish than ought
to prevail.
Having said so much by way of general introduction I now purpose,
before entering into details on the subjects of population, births,
causes of death, &c., to consider specially the mortality from the
principal diseases of the zymotic class, and subjects which naturally
arise out of this topic.
THE ZYMOTIC DISEASES.
The "class" of diseases called Zymotic comprises four "orders."
The first order, "Miasmatic," includes, among others, the diseases
which the Registrar-General calls "the seven principal diseases of
the zymotic class," still classing under the generic term " fever" the
three distinct fevers, "Typhus," "Enteric," and "Simple continued."
These diseases have a high interest for sanitarians, being considered as
of a more or less preventable character—it being the custom, moreover,
to regard the proportionate mortality from them to deaths from all
causes as an index of the sanitary condition of a district. But without
underrating the importance of this relation, it needs be said that there
are limitations to the applicability of the test which must be borne