View report page

87
average of 42 years. Rain fell on 173 days, the total amount
registered in the year being 21.90 inches, the average of 42
years being 22.59 inches. Most rain fell in September, 3.82
inches, and least in August 0.72. The means of the readings
of the barometer were 29.784 inches; the means of December
29.983, and of September 29.648, being respectively, highest
and lowest.
VACCINATION.
Table X (Appendix) is a return respecting the vaccination
of children whose births were registered in 1883, and for it I
am indebted to Mr. Shattock, the Vaccination Officer, whose
energetic discharge of the duties of his appointment it is my
pleasing duty, yearly, to recognise. The return shows a loss
of 4.0 per cent. in the cases, as against 4.4 and 3.3 in the two
previous years, in column 10, indicating loss "from removal
of children to places out of parish unknown, or which cannot
be reached, and cases not having been found." In the
Metropolis, as a whole, the loss considerably exceeds the
loss in Kensington. It is due to the Guardians of the Poor—
the authority responsible for carrying out the Vaccination
Acts—to say that they cordially support their officer in the
discharge of his duty.
With regard to the protection against small-pox afforded
by vaccination—differing in degree as this does according as
the operation is more or less perfectly performed—it should
be unnecessary to say anything in these days; but the perverse
pertinacity with which a noisy, if not considerable,
minority decry this most beneficent of medical discoveries,
shows no sign of abatement; the teaching of its opponents,
moreover, being of a sort to oppose the masses to the continuance
of the wise compulsion enforced by Parliament.
Hence it becomes a duty, year by year, to refer to the subject,
and I do not hesitate to refer again to the pregnant
facts submitted to the Local Government Board by their