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65
that should come to their knowledge in the discharge of their official
duties, which take them frequently into the homes of the poorer classes.
To facilitate the transmission of this information by the Visitors your
Vestry authorized me to prepare a form for their use. This was done;
but I must say that hitherto the resolution of the Board has not been
attended with the hoped-for results. The Board, moreover, at one time,
showed a disposition to recede from the position they had taken up, for
on my calling their attention to the omission on the part of the Visitors
to report cases, the "divisional members," to whom my communication
had been referred, simply agreed that the Visitors should report cases
when they had reason to suppose that no duly qualified medical man was
in attendance. "When a duly qualified medical man has charge of a
case, they are not prepared to do more than take steps for seeing that
proper precautions are taken at the Schools." This decision, if final and
acted upon, would be regrettable, as I am sure the Visitors could render us
essential assistance by giving effect to the original instructions of the
Board. Two out of seven Visitors officiating in Kensington have supplied
information of a not inconsiderable number of cases during the past year.
6. Clergymen, District Visitors, and School Teachers occasionally report cases
of sickness.
7. The Resident Medical Officers of St. George's and St. Mary's Hospitals
report the admission of cases, or the application of inadmissible cases, of
illness from houses in this parish.
8. Occasionally anonymous communications are the source of information, for
I have not felt at liberty to disregard such communications, which have
frequently proved accurate.
In one or other of these several ways cases come to our knowledge;
but, all told, they form only a small percentage of total
cases, as proved by the fact that the great majority of fatal cases
remain concealed till after registration of death—a fact from which
it is a fair inference that a still larger proportion of non-fatal cases
never come to our knowledge at all.
The only remedy for this regrettable state of affairs is legislation
to ensure the compulsory notification of the occurrence of infectious
diseases, a subject which has already been dealt with in this report.
POPULATION, INHABITED HOUSES, &c.
The Census.—The first published return of the population of
the parish as ascertained at the Census of 1881, showed a total of
162,924 persons, viz., 120,127 in the Town sub-district, and 42,797
in Brompton: the males numbering 65,276, and the females 97,648.
Excess of females, 32,372, viz., in the Town sub-district, 20,211,