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with their prosperity;—when I know that the laws against overcrowding could then be
exercised without scruple, and that from that moment some hundreds of lives would be
annually preserved ; with all these convictions, I feel it my duty to raise the question,
at whatever risk of being thought wild and Utopian.
Chapter IV.-—Deaths and Diseases in Public Establishments, during 1857: in
the Workhouse, the Common Lodging Houses, and the Model Lodging Houses.
Table IX of the Appendix, gives a detailed account of the diseases and deaths in
the Workhouse practice, both within the walls of the house, and among the out-door
poor. The chief points of interest are these : —
The Infirmary received in the year 1037 cases, being fewer by 112 than in
1856. Their mortality was 239,* which was not only an actual, but a relative improvement
on the deaths of the preceding year. Of course, this 23 per cent, is a very
high mortality, but it is fully explained by the class of patients who come under
treatment. Both the number of cases and the mortality were considerably greater in
the spring than in the other quarters. Not only were diseases of the lungs and consumption
prevalent and fatal in the early months of the year, but an unusually large
number of zymotic diseases were received, chiefly of fever and measles : these, however,
did not add materially to the death-register.
The patients who attended at the Workhouse, offer little for remark beyond a
general improvement on 1856 in the numbers of most complaints; diarrhoea, of course
chiefly in the autumn, was however more prevalent than in the former year by eleven
hundred cases against nine hundred. Bronchitis also shows larger figures in nearly the
same proportion.
Those who were visited at their own homes were 1786 in number, against
1525 in 1856. I have no doubt that a portion of this increase is attributable to the
very deserved popularity of the new Visiting Surgeon of the Workhouse, but the
increase affects some diseases more than others. These are chiefly measles and
diarrhoea among the zymotic diseases, and bronchitis. Here the epidemic of measles,
which ravaged Lincoln Court in the summer, makes a prominent appearance, one-half
the cases of measles of the whole year being on the visiting book of those three months.
Although the fact does not appear in my table, I am able to state from constant
inspection of the books, and from conversation with the Medical Officers of the Workhouse,
that idiopathic fever, fatal or not, has been a comparatively unfrequent disease
in their practice, and that true typhus, especially, has been almost absent from the
district.
I have attempted to compatc the total mortality in St. Giles Workhouse, with
that of the Workhouses in the surrounding districts; but as the bare figures might lead
to false conclusions, without the precaution of some very lengthy statements in
explanation, I shall omit them, and only give the result for our own district.
%
*248 : Reg. Gen., the discrepancy being from discordance in times of death and registration.