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1864—5.
ANNUAL REPORT
of the
Medical officer of health
Section I—Oil the Mortality of the Metropolis in 1864.
In my last Annual Report, I had to record a mortality in the Metropolis
in 1863, greater than any that had been experienced since the year 1854.
That high rate of deaths has, however, been considerably exceeded in the year
1864, when it reached the extremely high point of 26.45 per thousand. Only
in the influenza year, 1847, and in 1849 and 1854, the two cholera years, has
the mortality of London been so high as in the period to which this Report
refers.
It was in the first quarter of the year that the excess of mortality was
most marked. In a single week of January no less than 2427 deaths were
registered, the average deaths in the corresponding weeks of ten previous
years having been 1409 only. Of the 77,723 deaths that occurred in London
daring the year, 22,733 were in the first quarter. The other divisions of the
year had respectively—19,636 deaths, last quarter; 18,008 deaths, third
quarter; and 17,346 deaths, the second quarter.
The unusual cold of the early part of 1864 was in the main chargeable
with the very exceptional rate of death. Thus through the whole week
preceding the one in which the maximum mortality occurred, the thermometer
showed a temperature steadily below the mean of former years, reaching on
two nights the very low point of 6° or 7° Fahr. And in seven months of the
twelve the mean temperature of the air was below, and often notably below,
the average of previous years.
Cold was productive of its fatal results partly through diseases of the
air passages, partly indirectly through the increased activity given to certain
contagious diseases when a poor population huddles into close rooms for
warmth. Bronchitis, typhus, and measles especially were the diseases whose
unusual prevalence in 1864 chiefly accounts for the high mortality of the year.
Bronchitis caused 8666 deaths against 6049 in the previous year; typhus
3689 deaths instead of 2892; and measles 2750 instead of 1698, which was
its number of deaths in 1863.
The epidemic of smallpox that caused 2000 deaths in London in 1863,
slowly subsided as the year 1864 advanced, but at the end the disease had
scarcely declined to the standard of non.epidemic times. Scarlatina also,
though much less fatal in 1864 than in the previous year, remained very prevalent
and again increased in fatality in the last quarter. Diarrhoea, too, the
autumn being very dry, was more fatal than usual in the town.