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part of the Parish north of Uxbridge Road; and 115 to South
Kensington, i.e., the remainder of the Parish south of Uxbridge
Road. The cases recorded in the three preceding years respectively,
were 465, 252, and 252. The sufferers were for the most
part children of school age ; but no child was knowingly allowed to
go to school from an infected house. The spread of the disease
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 that there is 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 26.
The deaths in London from scarlet fever were 876, the corrected
decennial average being 1714: the type of disease being mild, the
case-mortality was low, viz., 6.9 per cent., as compared with 11.1,
10.3, and 9.4 in 1887-8-9 respectively. Some portion, however, of
the apparent reduction in the case-mortality may not unreasonably
be ascribed to the operation of the Compulsory Notification Act, as
doubtless we received information of nearly, if not quite all of
the cases, including therefore many of a milder form, such as in
pre - notification times would not have been reported. The
reduction in the gross mortality is no doubt largely due to the
greater use now made of hospitals for isolation of the sick,
and the consequent reduction in the number of centres of infection.
In 1878 only 7 per cent, of the total deaths from this
disease occurred in the London Fever and Metropolitan Asylums
Hospitals, from which date the proportion has risen year by year,
until, in 1890, it reached 62.2 per cent.; the proportion in Kensington
cases being 77 per cent. The percentage of removals, however,
in our own Parish in 1890 (57) was not so high as in the
four preceding years. This was due in part, probably, to the
mildness of many of the cases—parents being unwilling to let
their children go to hospital when they do not appear to be very