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diseases were both excessively fatal, the circumstances of a poor, exposed, ill
clothed, and ill housed labouring population obviously conducing to a high
mortality of such complaints among them. The other set of local diseases
was the little one of diseases of the bones and joints which yielded the unusual
number of 14 deaths against a quota of four.
In the Developmental class of diseases of the Registra General, the numbers
for St. Giles' agree so closely with those that would be calculated for its
share that no special notice of them is required. But it is found that, besides
three deaths from puerperal fever, there were 11 deaths of women in childbed
against a quota of 6 ; an excess which is only partly accounted for by the
presence of the Lying-in Hospital in St. Giles's.
Violent deaths were in some excess in our District; 42 persons lost their
lives by accident or negligence, including 14 babies who were suffocated.
Three murders and four suicides show no more disposition to undervalue life
on the part of our parishioners than among those who live elsewhere in
London.
Section IY.— On the Localization of Disease and Death in St. Giles's in 1866.
Our District of St. Giles' is divided into three sub-districts for registration
purposes, and these three parts exhibit for 1866 as for other years very
remarkable differences between themselves in the amount and nature of their
mortality. (Appendix—Table TV.)
St. George Bloomsbury, our most wealthy and best constructed subdistrict,
had 333 deaths registered in it. From this number a deduction of
36 has been made for children dying after a short residence at 35, Great
Coram Street, who had no previous connexion with the parish. But an addition
has been made of 37 persons taken from Bloomsbury into various hospitals
and dying there, 11 for residents dying in the "Workhouse within a short
period of their admission from Bloomsbury, and 3 for persons from this subdistrict
who died in the Shelton Hospital. These various corrections bring
the true number of deaths among residents of the St. George's sub-district to
348, being at the rate of 20.0 per thousand residents, estimated according to
the census of 1861.
St. Giles' South, our poorest and most crowded district, had 694 deaths
registered in it. But this number includes 226 persons who died in the
"Workhouse having previously resided in various parts of the three subdistricts,
and of these 226 only 85 had recently been resident in the
houses of the sub-district, the remaining 141 deaths being among persons
brought from other sub-districts or among old residents in the Workhouse,
with a few tramps. Excluding these 141 but adding 47 deaths in persons taken
from. St. Giles' South and dying in various hospitals of other districts as well
as 16 persons from this sub-district dying in the Shelton Hospital, the mortality
for the houses of South St. Giles' as finally corrected is 616, or 32.8
per 1000 of the residents in St. Giles' South.
St. Giles' North comprises one portion which has almost the advantages
of Bloomsbury, and another which has all the defects and poverty of South
St. Giles's. Hence it holds habitually an intermediate position between
those two sub-districts in its rate of mortality. In 1866 its registered deaths
were 465, but of this number 37 occurred in the Shelton Cholera Hospital,
out of whom 18 only belonged to North St. Giles's. Deducting the remaining
19 therefore, and adding 23 deaths of persons in Hospital and 44 deaths
in the "Workhouse among persons shortly before resident in the sub-district,
the corrected mortality of North St. Giles' becomes 513, and its death-rate
29'8 per thousand.