London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

View report page

St Giles (Camden) 1868

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for St. Giles District]

This page requires JavaScript

5
This Table affords evidence that St. Giles did not exceed its estimated
quota in the number of its deaths from miasmatic diseases. As this order of
diseases is that which is most likely to afflict a crowded and poor population,
it is gratifying to find that this test of our sanitary condition is so far favorable.
Constitutional affections, however, exhibit a decided excess. Under
this head we included tabes mesenterica, or the abdominal consumption of
children, and phthisis or the pulmonary consumption, of adults. There was
an undue amount of mortality from both of these maladies, and as these are
diseases of nutrition, their cause must be looked for in other than merely
meteorological conditions.
Diseases of the respiratory organs constitute another order of maladies
from which our District has suffered more than its due. There does not,
however, appear to have been any augmentation over previous years ; the
excess representing merely the average death.rate from these causes in St.
Giles District.
I have said that the diseases of the zymotic class have kept within their
estimated limits; and this is true of these diseases in the aggregate; but
there is one member of this class—scarlet fever—that has attacked the District
with considerable severity. Our estimated quota of deaths from this complaint
is 50; we have actually incurred a loss of 73 lives during the year.
I have inserted a Table, at page 6, to show in which of the Sub.Districts this
destructive fever was most rife.
Having alluded to the mortality from cancer in the Metropolis, I may
state that we have sustained our due proportion of that mortality. The
ratio for St. Giles is 26.8; our actual mortality was 26.
There are no other orders of disease that require particular notice.
IV.—The Mortality in the Sub.Districts of St. Giles.
We will now consider a question of more immediate practical importance
to us, viz., the comparative death.rate of the three sub.districts. In order
to ascertain with accuracy the number of deaths in each sub.district, I have
adopted the method of my predecessor ; that is to say, I have added to the
registered number of each sub.district the deaths that occurred out of it
either in the Workhouse or in adjacent hospitals; and I have subtracted from
the St. George District the deaths in the Infants' Home that occurred among
children brought there from other parishes. The subjoined Table shows the
death-rate in the three sub-districts respectively.

TABLE II.—Death-Rate per 1000 in Sub-districts*

DISTRICTS.1858.1859.1860.1861.1862.1863.1864.1865.1866.1867.1868.Average Death.rate of 10 years.
St. George, Bloomsbury19.818.418.520.521.619.921.621.120.019.021.020.04
St. Giles, South29.234.934.629.131.732.724.834.632.831.631.132 .6
St. Giles, North27.724.024.727.928.227.329.226629.826.625.327.2
Whole District25 .826 .026.227.028.928.531.129.629.026.926.827.9

Correction has been made for the extra length of the registration years 1863 & 1868, and for the
proportion of deaths due to each sub.district among the deaths in the Workhouse and in Hospitals outside
the respective sub.districts. The deaths in the Infants' Home are here deducted from the register
of the Bloomsbury sub-district.