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ANNUAL REPORT,
Ending 29th December, 1860.
Gentlemen,
I have the honour to lay before you a Report on the Health of
the Whitechapel District during the year 1860, and on the sanitary improvements which
have been effected therein during that period. From the returns of the local registrars,
transmitted to me weekly, through the kindness of the Registrar General, it appears that 2302
persons, including 163 non-residents, have died within the District in the fifty-two weeks
which terminated on Saturday, the 29th December, 1860, of which number, 1260 were males,
and 1042 females. The births, during the same period, were 2746, viz. 1426 males, and
1320 females. The excess of births over deaths, excluding the non-residents, is C07.
During the previous year, the deaths were 2321, including 189 non-residents. The mortality
is, therefore, nearly the same during the past year, as it was in the preceding year; and it
represents an annual death-rate of 25 per 1000, The births in 1860 are less by 80 than they
were in 1859.
In the quarter terminating on the 29th December, the births were 696, of which,
364 were males, and 332 females, and the deaths, including 41 non-residents, were 530, viz.
263 males, and 267 females. In the corresponding quarter of the previous year, the births
were 704, and the deaths, including the non-residents, (41, the same number), were 598.
The births, therefore, are less by 8, and the deaths less by 68, as compared with the corresponding
quarter of the previous year; and not only is the total mortality less, but the deaths
from epidemic diseases, that class of diseases, which is generally admitted to be kept under
control by sanitary regulations, have diminished from 118 to 81; and if we compare the tables,
showing the deaths from these diseases, in the corresponding quarters of 1859 and 1860, it
will be seen that the deaths from fever, hitherto the great scourge of this district, are less by
one-half, viz. 11 against 22. The mortality from small-pox has diminished from 23 to 5,
scarlet fever from 40 to 15; while the deaths from hooping-cough have increased from 1 to 12.
The total decrease in the number of deaths in the entire class of zymotic diseases during the
quarter, is 30, viz. 103 against 113. But the most interesting fact shown in the mortality
tables, and in the tables of sickness, during the last five years, is, that the deaths from fever,
and the cases of illness from this disease, have annually diminished. Thus, in 1856, the
deaths from fever were 188, and the cases which were attended by the Medical Officers of the
Union, during the same period, were 1929; in 1857, the deaths were 117, and the cases 1441;
in 1858, the deaths were 104, and the cases 590; in 1859, the deaths were 93, and the cases
411; and in 1860, the deaths were only 69, and the cases 190. The amount of suffering
which so many of the poor have escaped, by this diminution of the number of fever cases, in
the course of the last five years, is beyond my powers of description; but some estimate of it
may be formed, when we reflect, that the average duration of a case of fever is about four
weeks, and that during the progress of the disease the agony that is indured is sometimes intense.