London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
St Giles (Camden) 1862
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for St. Giles District]
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bury. This difference is only accounted for to a small degree by the different
proportion of the children in the two populations. The great bulk of the
difference arises from preventible causes, unwholesome circumstances and
ignorant management necessarily affecting chiefly the most tender and helpless
ages.
The Ten Localities—their Order of Mortality from Zymotic Diseases,
(Miasmatic Order) 1862.
| 0rder of Sequence, 18 6 2. | Locality of | Deaths from Miasmatic Diseases in 1862. | Zymotic mortality per 10,000 | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All miasmatic diseases. | Small-pox. | Measles. | Scarlet Fever. | Diphtheritis. | Whooping Cough. | Continued fevers, of which ( ) registered as "typhus." | Diarrhoea. | Other miasmatic diseases. | ||||
| Best 1st | B Kussell-square | 11 | — | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | (0) | 2 | 1 | 18 |
| 2-3 | B. Bloomsbury-square | 26 | — | — | 3 | 1 | 10 | 7 | (1) | 3 | 2 | 49 |
| L. Lincoln's Inn-fields | n | — | 2 | 2 | — | — | 4 | (2) | — | 3 | 49 | |
| 4-5-6 | H. Northern Drury-la. | 27 | — | 4 | 7 | — | 6 | 8 | (5) | 1 | 1 | 52 |
| K. Southern Drury-la. | 27 | 2 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 8 | (3) | 3 | 3 | 53 | |
| A. Bedford-square | 23 | — | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 8 | (2) | 5 | 3 | 58 | |
| 7th | G. Short's-gardens | 41 | — | 2 | 9 | — | 3 | 17 | (4) | 6 | 4 | 65 |
| Worst 8-9-10 | E. Church-lane | 34 | — | 3 | 9 | — | 3 | 13 | (5) | 3 | 3 | 73 |
| C. Coram-street | 46 | 1 | 11 | 8 | 2 | 6 | 10 | (4) | 1 | 7 | 75 | |
| F. Dudley-street | 70 | — | 9 | 24 | 2 | 7 | 18 | (5) | 3 | 7 | 78 | |
| Workhouse Inmates | 10 | — | — | 1 | — | — | 7 | (7) | — | 2 | — | |
| Whole District | 326 | 3 | 40 | 68 | 8 | 42 | 101 | (38) | 27 | 36 | 60 | |
* The totals will not always be found to correspond exactly with those in Table III. of the Appendix,
This arises partly from the different ways in which a complicated disease may be recorded on two occasions;
partly from some correction having been made in the one set of Tables, after the other was compiled. In
the column of "fevers," puerperal fever is here included.
In the above table it will be seen that measles culminated about Coram
Street, scarlatina about Dudley Street, and whooping-cough in the neighbourhood
of Bloomsbury Square. But with the exception of scarlet fever and
continued fever all diseases, of the zymotic class were less unevenly distributed
than usual throughout the di trict.
Continued fever, including epidemic tvphus, was seen especially in the
four localities that are at the bottom of the list. In the poor and thickly
populated districts of Dudley Street, Short's Gardeus, and Church Lane, it
is to be expected that this disease, depending as it does on privation and
crowding, would attain its maximum of fatality. It was less to be expected
that the neighbourhood of Coram Street should stand below both of the
Drury Lane localities in its total mortality from fever. Typhus, once produced
by the causes just mentioned, spreads with great rapidity by contagion. It
is therefore of the utmost importance to get persons suffering from this disease
removed whenever possible from their homes. ' This was done, as has been
before stated, in one third of the fatal cases of "fever" and probably in more
than half of the fatal cases of true typhus. Probably there would have been
a much smaller mortality if the typhus patients had been removed universally
from their homes.