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QUARTERLY REPORT,
Ending 30th June, 1860.
Gentlemen,
I have now the honour to submit to your notice my Quarterly Report
of the Births and Deaths in the District, and of the work accomplished by the
Inspectors in the promotion of sanitary improvements.
In the last quarter, comprising the thirteen weeks, ending Saturday, June 30th,
the total mortality in the Whitechapel District, including the deaths in the London
Hospital of 40 non-residents, is 523, viz., 308 males and 215 females. The Births,
during the same period, are 668, viz., 331 males and 337 females. The excess of
male over female births is only 6, while the deaths of males exceeded those of females
by 83. It is estimated that the normal proportion of male births to female is as
106 to 100. In the corresponding quarter of the previous year, the total births were
715, viz., 390 males and 325 females; the deaths were 448, viz., 257 males and
231 females, including the deaths of 47 non-residents. The Births, therefore, in this
quarter are less by 47, and the Deaths greater by 35, than they were in the corresponding
quarter of 1859. Estimating the population of the District at 84,000, the
present mortality, deducting the deaths of the non-residents (which we are fairly
entitled to do, inasmuch as we include in our mortality tables all the deaths in the
London Hospital that are occasioned by violence) is 23 in 1,000. This is above the
average rate of the mortality in the corresponding quarters of the last three years,
the deaths in each quarter being on an average of 466, which is at the rate of 22.2 per
1,000. The increase in the mortality may be attributed to the unusually cold weather
that prevailed during the whole of the last three months, when the mean temperature
of the air was 50.5, which is about three degrees below that of the corresponding
quarters of the three previous years.
That the unseasonably cold weather has been the cause of the increased rate of
mortality will be readily admitted, when, on comparing the deaths from pulmonary
diseases, including consumption (diseases universally acknowledged to be aggravated
by cold and damp weather) with the deaths from the same diseases in the corresponding
quarters of 1857-8-9, it will be seen that they have increased from 157, 142, and
130 respectively, to 168 in the quarter recently terminated.
The deaths from epidemic diseases are, however, fewer than in any of the corresponding
quarters of the three preceding years. In 1857 the deaths from epidemic
diseases were 73, of which 16 were from fever; in the following year they were 108,
of which 20 were from fever; in 1859, the deaths from these diseases were 72, in-