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37
The Registrar-General has prepared a table, showing "Deaths
and Annual Rate of Mortality from Small-pox in the Metropolitan
Districts during the five years 1877-81, the fatal cases in hospitals
being distributed," from which we learn inter alia that the deaths
in the parishes comprising the borough of Chelsea (Paddington
however being joined with Kensington) were as follow:—
Total in
District. Deaths per Annum. 5 years
1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1877-81.
Kensington and Paddington 136 41 31 11 76 295
Fulham and Hammersmith 63 64 39 13 46 225
Chelsea 47 28 16 6 31 128
The mean Annual Rate per 1,000,000 in the five years was
as follows:- Kensington with Paddington, 226; Fulham with
Hammersmith, 480; and Chelsea, 300; the rate in some other
parishes, where no small-pox hospital exists anywhere near being:—
Westminster, 244; Marylebone, 202; St. Pancras, 276; Strand,
230; Holborn, 220; Shoreditch, 452; Bethnal Green, 512;
Whitechapel, 434; St. George-in-the-East, 566; Stepney, 848;
Mile End Old Town, 464; Poplar, 641; St. Saviour, Southwark,
520; St. Olave, Southwark, 454; and Wandsworth, 298.
The Registrar-General, in his Annual Summary above quoted,
goes on to state that—
"Of the five groups of districts into which London is divided, the one with
the highest small-pox death rate, on an average of five years, was the
eastern group, the one with the lowest rate was the central group. In
neither of these groups is there any small-pox hospital; so that the
high rate in the eastern group cannot possibly be ascribed to the presence
of such a suspected centre of contagion. In the southern group, which
has the second highest rate, there are two small-pox hospitals, and the
districts which would be especially affected by their presence, would be
Greenwich, Camberwell, and Lambeth; of these three the two first had the
highest small-pox rates in the group, while Lambeth presented no
corresponding feature. In the northern group, which had the third
highest rate, there are also two small-pox hospitals, and the districts
which would be most affected by these are, first Hackney and then
Islington; and these are the two districts in the group with the highest
rates. There remains the western group with one small pox hospital;
this is situated in the district of Fulham, and it is in that district that
the rate was highest in the group.
"So far, therefore, as can be judged from the mortality of the past five years,
it would appear that the presence of a small-pox hospital in a district
coincides almost invariably with a small-pox death rate above that of
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