London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
View report page
Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
St Giles (Camden) 1857
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for St. Giles District]
This page requires JavaScript
35
Section C.— Workhouse and Pauper Medical Practice.—In a population
which consists so extensively of the lowest classes, the workhouse is an establishment
of the first interest to the Medical Officer of Health.
The number of inmates in a workhouse, compared with the number of inhabitants of a district, and without certain other considerations, is not a safe guide to the relative amount of pauperism; still, as I shall have occasion to make many comparisons between St. Giles and its neighbours, it will not be amiss to introduce a small table of the numbers of inmates in the various workhouses ; the figures of this may be suggestive to those who are more skilled than myself in the economy of pauperism.
| District. | Inmates of Workhouses, 1851. | Per 10,000 of the Population. | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Metropolis | 22,999 | 127 | ||
| St. Pancras | 1,248 | 75 | ||
| St. Marylebone | 1,620 | 105 | ||
| Strand | 482 | 109 | ||
| St. Giles | 768 | 142 | ||
| Holborn | 707 | 151 | ||
| St. Martin's | 627 | 255 | ||
The average number of inmates in St. Giles Workhouse has been 720, 741,
697, 734, and 689, in the last five years respectively; the mean of these numbers, 716,
is a good deal below the census made of the inmates in 1851.
Besides infants at the breast, of whom there are generally some thirty or
forty, there are very few children in the Workhouse ; the pauper children are received
into the Establishment at Heston, near Hounslow; their number has lately been about
100, nine or ten new children on the average being admitted here every quarter and a corresponding
number discharged. Last year, 1857, there were six deaths among them.
St. Giles district distributes less out-door parochial relief in proportion to the
amount of in-door relief, than any of the districts above enumerated. This appears from
the sum expended on the in and out-door pauper of each district, but beyond this I am
not in possession of any means of making a useful comparison. In the joint parishes of
St. Giles and St. George the number of persons in receipt of out-door relief in money
has averaged 216, 220, 192, 185, 194 in the last five years; thus the mean number
of these out-door paupers has been 201, or between a quarter and a third of the indoor
paupers.
Medical relief, with which I am more especially concerned, is freely distributed
both within the workhouse and among the out-door poor, but in this respect again I
am upable to institute a numerical comparison between St. Giles and its neighbours.
The mode of administering parochial medical relief differing from that of other districts
requires a brief notice.
The Workhouse Infirmary receives yearly upwards of a thousand cases of disease,
a small proportion of which come from the inmates of the workhouse, but the mass of
them are admitted directly from without.