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54
normal or Lewisham death-rate. To this number, however, it is necessary to add
13 deaths, among persons taken from Bloomsbury to the workhouse, and 17 deaths
occurring in hospitals. The number of deaths, with these corrections, become 184
in the 10,000, a death-rate no longer below the inevitable mortality of a town; but
even then we have matter for the sincerest congratulation in the health of Bloomsbury,
in 1857.
In St. Giles, South, the deaths of 388 males, and 357 females, were registered
in the year; but this total of 745 cannot be used to estimate the death-rate
without several corrections.
The workhouse, situated in this sub-district, receives sickness from every
part of St. Giles and Bloomsbury, and its mortality adds unfairly to the numbers
registered in South St. Giles. Of the 248 deaths which have been assigned to the
workhouse in 1857, I have been able to refer 138 to the houses from which the
patients were brought. The remainder 110 is made up of old inmates dying in the
workhouse, and of people who were not at the time of their admission suffering under
the disease which carried them off. It also includes a few other cases where the
residence of the patient before admission could not be ascertained. Of the 138
deaths which are referred to the previous habitations of the paupers, 13 were from
St. George's parish, 42 from the northern district of St. Giles, and 83 from St. Giles,
South.
Hence it is necessary, in estimating the death-rate of St. Giles, South, to
subtract the two former numbers, 13 and 42, from the registered number. Another
correction, however, is required; from this sub-district 40 persons are known to have
been carried to various hospitals, and to have there died during the year ; these,
therefore, must be added. Five persons, on the other hand, died in the Endell Street
Hospital, of whom three may be subtracted as strangers. Taking all these matters
into consideration, the adopted number of deaths referable to the population of South
St. Giles, in 1857, was 727, or 364 per 10,0C0 residents: an enormous death-rate,
twice that of Bloomsbury.
North St. Giles, according to its habit, holds the intermediate position. The
deaths registered in the year amount to 4.37, of whom 223 were males, and 214
females. Add to these, 42 who died in the workhouse, and 23 who expired in
various hospitals, and the total deaths of the year become 502, or 288 in the 10,000
inhabitants.
Of 325 zymotic diseases, which are referred to the sub-districts in which they
proved fatal, 52 were in St. George, 157 in South St. Giles, and 116 in St. Giles,
North.
By reference to Table VII. of the Appendix, it will be seen that the only
death from small-pox of the year, occurred in Bloomsbury. Measles, which is one of
the diseases shown to be in excess in the district as a whole, was by far the most
prevalent in St. Giles, South; indeed, it prevailed in the summer months in an
epidemic form, about the southern boundary of the district.
Whooping-cough and diarrhoea, the other zymotic diseases which especially