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

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Kensington 1889

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Kensington]

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19
of the deaths belong to the Brompton sub-district. Twenty of
the deaths occurred in hospitals, to which 166 out of 252 recorded
cases were removed for treatment. Of the 252 cases, 145 occurred
in North Kensington—viz., that part of the Parish north of
Uxbridge Road; and 107 in South Kensington—the remainder of
the Parish south of that road. The cases recorded in the three
preceding years respectively were 100, 465 and 252. The
sufferers were for the most part children of school age. No child
was knowingly allowed to go to school from an infected house.
The existence of the disease was revealed occasionally by the
registration of a death, and its spread was in several instances
the result of keeping patients at home under circumstances that
rendered nugatory any attempt at isolation. It is satisfactory,
however, to find less unwillingness, year by year, on the part of
parents to avail themselves of the advantages afforded by the
hospitals of the Asylums Board for treatment, and for isolation
when this is necessary for preventing the spread of the disease.
Evidence of this fact may be seen in the Table at page 21.
The deaths in London from this cause were 784, the
corrected decennial average being 1887. The type of the disease
was. mild, the case-mortality in the hospitals being low. In
Kensington the mortality in respect of known cases was 11.1 per
cent., a rate probably in excess of the true proportion, as some
cases doubtless occurred of which we had no information. Still
we have reason to believe that the occurrence of the disease is
much more generally reported now than in byegone years. Thus
if we compare the figures in the Table for the year 1887 with
those for the year 1880, we note that the number of cases
recorded was the same in both years, but that the case-mortality
in 1880 (22.5 per cent.) was more than double that in 1887;
the only conclusion at which we can arrive, therefore, is that in
1880 the concealed cases must have been considerably more
numerous than in 1887. It may be added that the deaths in
London in 1880 were more than twice as numerous as in 1887;
and yet we had then no such alarm as in the latter year. The