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REPORT.
Gentlemen,
In presenting to you my report for the quarter ending the 27th December, 1856,
I have thought it advisable to lay before you an account of the sickness and mortality
for the whole year, in addition to that for the quarter recently terminated.
Should this proceeding meet your approval, I shall continue to make my report
for the last quarter in each year, an annual report.
The proposed arrangement will enable you to compare the rate of mortality in
your district, with that of other localities in London, and elsewhere, which is published
in the annual reports of the Registrar General.
The total mortality in the Whitechapel District for the three months ending on
Saturday, the 27th December, 1856, was 563, including the deaths in the London
Hospital, the total mortality for the same period in 1855, was 599.
In the 52 weeks that ended December 27th, 1856, the total number of
deaths registered in your district was 2237. This number contrasts very favorably
with the mortality of the preceding year,—the deaths for 1855 being 2459.
The number of deaths from epidemics, is also less for the year that has just past,
than for the one preceding. 469 deaths from these causes were registered in 1855,
and 421 in 1856. Measles, small pox, scarlatina, and diarrhoea, proved more fatal
in 1855, the deaths from measles being 44, small pox 52, scarlatina 86, diarrhoea
100. In 1856, 12 persons only died of measles, 31 of small pox, 45 of scarlet
fever, and 81 of diarrhoea. There was a difference of seven in the mortality from
hooping cough, and of fifty-eight from typhus fever ; the deaths from the former
disease in 1855, were 57, and from the latter, 130 ; whereas during the last year,
hooping cough proved fatal to 64, and typhus fever to 188. The total number of
deaths in the London Hospital was, for the year 1855, 313, and in 1856, 297. In
the Workhouses belonging to the Whitechapel District, the deaths in 1855 were
332, and in 1856, 353. If the deaths in the London Hospital are excluded, about
a fifth of the whole mortality of the district occurs in the workhouses. Although the
public health during the last year was unusually good in the metropolis, and the district
of Whitechapel partook equally in the benefit, yet, it appears that typhus fever,
the plague of modern times, has proved very destructive to the lives of the inhabitants
in your district. This sad fact need not occasion in us any surprise, when we
consider the great want of sewerage, and the excessive overcrowding which is found
to exist in the poor localities. In many places, the ground is so saturated with the
contents of cesspools, that even were sewers to be at once made in every street, it
would be some time before the inhabitants could be freed from the noxious exhalations
of the decomposed animal matter which lies just below the surface of the ground.
So long, therefore, as the inhabitants of this district are compelled to breathe an
atmosphere contaminated with the effete matter which is given off by human beings,
congregated together in confined places, emanations from cesspools, and noxious
gases from several of the manufactories, we shall scarcely be justified in concluding
that the comparatively improved state of the public health during the past year will
be permanent. Had the mortality from fever diminished, there would have been
additional cause for congratulation and thankfulness, but we find that, although the
Medical Officers of the Union attended 481 cases of fever less during the last year,
than during 1855, vet, the total mortality from that disease, as shown by the returns
of the Registrar General, is greater. The disease must therefore have been of a
severer type.