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1800 — 61.
ANNUAL REPORT
of the
Medical Officer of
TO THE BOARD OP WORKS FOR THE ST. GILES'S DISTRICT.
June 1861.
Gentlemen,
I have the honour to present to you my Report for the
year 1860. I know too well your anxiety for the Health of your district to fear
that it will be deficient in interest to you, through any short-comings in its writer.
For myself, your approbation will follow most securely, if future years shall confirm
the promise of our recent experience, that St. Giles's suffers nigh a hundred deaths
annually less than its average before I became your Officer of Health.
I have the honour to be,
Gentlemen,
Your faithful Servant,
GEORGE BUCHANAN,
B.A., M.D.y LONDIN.
Member of the Royal College of Physicians; Assistant Physician
to the Hospital for Sick Children, and to the
London Fever Hospital.
75, Gower Street. Medical Officer of Health.
REPORT, &c.
Chapter I.— On the Mortality of the Metropolis in 1860.
Sixty-one thousand eight hundred and twenty-one persons died from all causes
within the bills of mortality in the fifty-two weeks of 1860. In deducing from this
number the death-rate of the town, our first step is to form an accurate estimate of
the population of the year. The publication of the census of 1861. allows this to
be done with much certainty, and a preliminary word on the results of this census
has therefore an interest for us.
The population of London increased between 1851 and 1861, by 440,798
persons, being at the rate of l.722 per cent, annually. Between 1841 and 1851,
the rate of increase was greater, being 1.975 percent, annnally. The estimate that
has been made of the population for the few past years was based on the last mentioned
rate of increase, and requires now, therefore, to be somewhat reduced. In