London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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Kensington 1881

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Kensington]

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86
St. Joseph's House, at Portobello Road, Notting Hill—a Roman
Catholic Home for some 250 aged poor persons of both sexes,
brought from various parts, and principally from Ireland if one may
judge from the large proportion of deaths of Irish persons. The
Registrar General, however, does not regard St. Joseph's House
as a public institution. The New Infirmary at Notting Hill, for
the Sick Poor chargeable to the rates of the Parish of Marylebone,
was opened in June, and contains some 700 beds. The deaths of
non-parishioners at that Institution have been entirely ignored in
our statistics, but will furnish occasion for a few remarks in a
subsequent paragraph. The deaths registered at the Parish
Infirmary and Workhouse, at the Brompton Hospital, and at the
Hospitals of the Asylums Board were 437, or 16 per cent. on
total deaths, the percentage proportion of deaths in public institutions
in the Metropolis generally being 20.8. The deaths at
the Marylebone Infirmary would raise the percentage in Kensington
to the Metropolitan rate, 20.8.
The Parish Infirmary and Workhouse.—I am indebted to
Mr. H. Percy Potter, the Medical Superintendent of the Infirmary,
and the Medical Officer of the Workhouse, for the statistics of
mortality of these institutions. The deaths, 273, were 37 more
than in 1880, and more than 10 per cent. of the total deaths
registered in the Parish. Males 134, females 139: 80, 86, 54,
and 53, in the four quarters respectively. One hundred and
thirty-three of the deaths occurred in the first and fourth or colder
quarters of the year, and 140 in the second and third or warmer
quarters, an inversion of the usual order of things, as the deaths
at workhouse infirmaries, where so many aged persons die from
chest affections, are, as a rule, more numerous in winter than in
summer. The ages at death were:—Under 1 year, 42; between
1 and 60, 116 ; at 60 and upwards, 115. Six inquests were held,
the verdicts in four cases shewing death to have resulted from
"natural causes." There was one suicide, and one homicide, a
woman recently confined having thrown her babe out of window
during an attack of temporary insanity. Classifying the fatal
diseases, it appears that of the deaths, 24 were due to zymotic
diseases; to constitutional diseases, 43; local diseases, 161;
developmental diseases, 21; violent deaths, 3; other causes, 21.