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113
A RETROSPECT.
Reform of Local Government being to all appearance
imminent, it will not be out of place to review, in a very few
sentences, the results, as they are indicated by the state of the
public health, attained under the system initiated in 1856, by the
passing of the Metropolis Management Act, 1855, supplemented
as that Act has been by others entitled "Sanitary" and
"Nuisances Removal"—not forgetting the Acts under which
the Thames has been embanked, and the Metropolis provided
with efficient main sewers, and a fairly satisfactory water
supply. The effects of these and other minor Acts, carried out
as they have been by the Metropolitan Board of Works, and by
the several Vestries and District Boards, are apparent enough in
the reduced death-rate by which London compares favourably
with the great cities of the civilized world.
The statistics at my command go back to 1841, and I find
that in the three quinquennial periods—1841-5, 1846-50, and
1851-55, the death-rate in London was 24.2, 25.4, and 24.8 per
1,000 persons living; or for the fifteen years prior to the
passing of the Metropolis Management Act, 24.8 per 1,000. In
the following fifteen years, 1856-70, the rate had fallen to 23.9
the rate in the three five-yearly periods being—in 1856-60,
22.7; 1861-65,24.4; and 1866-70, 24.3. In the next fifteen
years, 1871-85, the average rate fell to 21.3 per 1,000; the rate
in the three successive periods being—in 1871-75, 22.9; in
1876-80, 22.2; and in 1881-85, 20.7. In 1886 the death-rate
was 19.9; and last year, 1887, it was 19.6, the lowest recorded
since the present system of civil registration began. It is almost
needless to say that this remarkable decline implies the saving
of tens of thousands of lives, to say nothing of myriad illnesses
prevented ; or that it will serve as a monumental record of the
good effects of the sanitary legislation and administration of the
last 32 years, long after the existing system of local government
shall have undergone more or less drastic revision.