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The diseases which in London produced the surplus of deaths in 1858 over
1857, belonged chiefly to two great orders; the miasmatic order of zymotic
complaints* on the one hand, and on the other hand, disorders of the organs of
respiration. To the excess in the former group, small-pox, measles, scarlatina, indeed
every important member contributed, with the exception of diarrhoea and typhus fever.
Scarlatina, however, was the complaint which was found in chief and increasing
amount during the year. It caused death in upwards of 4000 cases, more than 3000
of which occurred in the last six months of the year, the total number of the year
1857 having been only 1500. The other group of diseases, those of the breathing
apparatus, were, of course, mainly represented by their chief members, bronchitis and
inflammation of the lungs, which produced upwards of a thousand more deaths in 1858
than in the preceding year.
Assuming then the inevitable town death-rate to be 17 per thousand annually,
the excess above this for London was 6.56 in 1858, while in 1857 it was but 5.20.
In the year which has just ended, therefore, more deaths occurred from preventible
causes than in 1857, in the proportion of five to four.
Besides the table in the Appendix before referred to, there will be found on
page 26 a comparison of the aggregate death-rate of the metropolis, both in 1857 and
1858, with that of St. Giles's and the districts bordering on St. Giles's; and on page
28, the diseases which produced the mortality of last year in London are exhibited,
and their prevalence is compared with that of the same diseases in St. Giles's.
Chapter II.—Mortality from all Causes in St. Giles's District, in 1859.
The deaths registered in the entire district numbered 1331. They are returned
by the Registrar General at 1334, but an average was inserted on one occasion
instead of the true number certified to the local Registrar. This would bring the
total to 1347, but of these no fewer than sixteen were registered twice over; so that
the real number of deaths which occurred in the district was 1331, the number above
given. The mention of these sources of error shows the care which is needful to
avoid fallacy in the most elementary points of a statistical enquiry.
But the registered mortality of a district, however accurately determined, does
not represent the true amount of deaths among the inhabitants. Public institutions,
whose doors are open for the reception of the sick poor from all quarters, swell unduly
the registered mortality of the districts in which they are situated, and take away from
other districts a portion of the deaths which would be assigned to them under a more
perfect system of registration. St. Giles's being dependent on the hospitals of all
neighbouring districts for the relief of its sick poor, and having no similar establishment
within its own limits, is peculiarly affected by this source of discrepancy. In 1858,
seventy-one persons left St. Giles's district, and died in the hospitals of the neigh-
* In the class "zymotic diseases" of the Registrar General, are comprised those
disorders which are generated in the system of the individual, or spread from the individual
through the community, in the manner of ferments. Where the poison of such disease is conveyed
through the atmosphere, the zymotic disease, belongs in the classification of the
Registrar General to the "miasmatic" order. Plenty of examples of these diseases will be
exhibited in the pages of this Report.