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) 1858
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for St. Giles District]
This page requires JavaScript
13
their death-rate in each locality. These facts for 1858, with a column for comparison
with the previous year, are thrown into the following table; in deducing inferences
from it, the different numbers of children in the population of the several parts of the
district, must be had in mind.*
Order of Mortality among Children, †
| Order of Sequence, 1858. | Locality of | Children dying in 1858 | Mortality per 10,000. | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under Two years. | Between Two & Five | 1857. | 1858. | ||
| Best 1st. | B. Russell Square | 15 | 8 | 38 | 49 |
| 2nd. | L. Lincoln's Inn Fields | 12 | 4 | 108 | 64 |
| 3rd. | D. Bloomsbury Square | 30 | 16 | 82 | 69 |
| 4th | A. Bedford Square | 21 | 6 | 75 | 75 |
| 5th. | C. Coram Street | 44 | 15 | 73 | 92 |
| 6th to 9 th. | E. Church Lane | 53 | 13 | 123 | 129 |
| K. Southern Drury Lane | 50 | 18 | 140 | 138 | |
| H. Northern Drury Lane | 46 | 23 | 196 | 137 | |
| G. Short's Gardens | 69 | 21 | 197 | 138 | |
| F. Dudley Street | 102 | 28 | 199 | 167 | |
| Workhouse Inmates | 8 | 1 | — | — | |
| Total District | 450 | 153 | 130 | 111 | |
The fall in the infantile death-rate since 1857, as disclosed by this comparison, appears
to have followed in its distribution much the same course as the fall in the entire
death-rate. Of course, the poorest localities have not all at once given up their character
of fatality to children, and they still remain much the worst in the actual infantile deathrate.
But these localities, especially those before adverted to, F, G, & H, have experienced
the most remarkable relative reduction of the mortality of children under five years old.
On the other hand, two localities which presented a slight rise in the general deathrate,
are shown here to owe that increase to a larger mortality among children.
Lincoln's Inn Fields neighbourhood again presents the same anomalous change in
position.
In our next inquiry—into the distribution of zymotic disease in 1858—we shall
find the explanation of the chief distinctions which have hitherto appeared between
this year and 1857. In the following arrangement, the relative mortality of the ten
districts, in regard of their total miasmatic diseases,§ has determined their sequence.
The chief members of this group of diseases are given separately.
The places affected by the prevailing diseases are here sufficiently indicated;
Scarlatina, the disease of the group, which chiefly assumed an epidemic form, was in
force enough to impress on the total miasmatic mortality the order of its own prevalence.
It culminated in amount and virulence in the latter half of the year, in and
* In my General Report of last year, it was shown that, at the census of 1851, St.
Giles's as a whole, and each of its three sub-districts, possessed fewer children for its population
than the average of London, and that the deficiency was most conspicuous in Bloomsbury.
† A hundred and forty-four deaths occuring in the Workhouse, and all the deaths in
the Hospitals, are. in this and the following tables, uniformly referred to the houses whence
the patients were brought. The remaining sixty-five deaths arc attributed to imitates of the
Workhouse, and arc considered by themselves.
§ See note, page 24.