View report page

8
SECTION III.—On the Causes of Death in St. Giles's District.
In table III of the Appendix will be found in detail the causes of the
1,461 deaths that occurred in the past year among persons belonging to
St. Giles's district. Here, too, the ages at death are shown. The diseases
prevailing in each quarter of the year are given in Appendix IV. Referring,
therefore to these tables for minuter information and for actual numbers, the
enquiry may proceed at once to the relative, fatality of various diseases in
St. Giles's as compared with the other districts. Failing more particular
data, London as a whole furnishes a valuable standard of comparison. St.
Giles's contains l÷5l-88th part of the population of London. That share
of the mortality of London may be called the quota of deaths for the
residents of St. Giles's, and this quota has been taken in the opposite table
for each class and order of disease. Thus estimated, some causes of death
are found to be particularly rife in St. Giles's, others to be less frequent than
its population would lead us to expect. In the table, the quota stands side
by side with the actual mortality from each class of causes; some of the
more interesting facts may be extracted for comment. (See Table.)
Zymotic Diseases numbered 307 or 28 above their quota. In 1860,
their number was much lower, (264) and in 1859 it was much higher (3/4)
than in the year just past; herein following to an exaggerated degree* the
variation that these diseases have exhibited in London as a whole. The
members of this class that were in 1861 especially fatal in St. Giles's were
measles which prevailed most in the first quarter of the year; scarlatina,
whose excessive mortality occurred in the last quarter; to a small degree
continued fever including typhus, in the latter half of the year; and croup
which all the year through was unduly fatal.† Some other diseases
of the zymotic class have been less fatal in St. Giles's than their calculated
amount. Small-pox did not produce a single death in the year, the one that
is placed to the account of this disease having been a case where chicken-pox
contributed to the fatal result. Whooping cough was slightly below its estimated
quota, and (which is an unusual circumstance) diarrhoea was less fatal
in St. Giles's than in the average of the town.
Diseases of the Constitutional class include the important group of
consumptive disorders, and from these in 1861, as in former years, St. Giles's
experienced an excessive mortality. There were 281 deaths instead of the
calculated 209 from consumptive diseases.
Diseases of the various parts and organs of the body—Local diseases—
were also in excess in St. Giles's. This excess obtained in all the important
sub-divisions of the class. Diseases of the Brain, of the Heart, of the Lungs,
of the Kidneys, were all fatal in this district beyond the average of London.
Intemperance, overwork, poverty, and exposure, are conditions which lead to
these diseases, and all these causes are active among the St. Giles's population.
* The law lias been before insisted on in these reports,—that the exceptional
character of a season in respect of any disease is most marked in districts where that
disease is habitually prevalent, and this equally whether the exceptional character be on
the side of excess or subsidence. In districts where the disease in question is habitually
infrequent below the average, the exceptional character of a season in respect of that
disease is but little marked.
† It is not improbable that some deaths preceded by laryngismus stridulus (false
croup or crowing respiration) are registered as occurring from croup. This false croup
is found almost solely in children who have rickets, a disease very prevalent in St.
Giles's and having nothing to do with the zymotic class.