View report page

EIGHTH ANNUAL REPORT,
For the Year ending January 2nd, 1864.
Gentlemen,
The Report which I have now the honor of submitting to
you comprises the return of sickness and mortality in the Wliitechapel District
for the quarter ending 2nd January, 1864, and also the return of the sickness
and mortality during the past year. The year terminated on Saturday, the
2nd January, 1864, and it contained 53 weeks, it being necessary to introduce
an intercalary week in about every fifth year in order to compensate for the
annual deficiency of l¼ days when reckoning 52 weeks in a year.
During the quarter terminating on the 2nd January, 1864, there were born
within the Whitechapel District 729 children, of whom 393 were males, and
336 females. In the same period 685 persons died, of whom 392 were males,
and 293 females. In the corresponding quarter of the previous year the births
were 721, and the deaths 670, but as 14 weeks are reckoned in this quarter,
the mortality as compared with that in the corresponding period of 1862,
instead of its being greater by 15, as appears from the quarterly returns, is
less by 34. The average number of deaths per week is 49. The births have
exceeded the deaths by the small number of 44, but if the deaths of the nonresidents
are excluded the excess of births over deaths is 98.
The greatest weekly mortality (66) occurred in the week ending November
28th, when the mean temperature of the air was 47.9°, which is 6.7° above the
average (as determined by Me. Glashier), but in this week the number of
deaths was increased by the registration of 19 deaths in the London Hospital.
This large mortality was therefore an accidental circumstance in this district,
as an excessive mortality did not prevail over the entire metropolis. The
mean temperature of the week ending January 2nd, was 37.1°, and the lowest
night temperature was on Saturday, the 2nd January, when the thermometer
registered 25.2°. In this week the mortality in the Whitechapel District was
41. In the following week, when the lowest night temperature (viz., on
Thursday) was 14.3°, and the mean temperature 26.7°, the mortality in
that week rose to 66.
As was the case in the corresponding period of last year the chief causes of
death have been from diseases of the epidemic class, particularly from scarlet
fever and from typhus, the former contributing to the total mortality 46, and
the latter 52. Although fever has prevailed very generally in the entire
district, yet the disease seems to have been especially severe in one or two houses,
viz., at No. 29, Little Alie Street, in which 8 cases have recently occurred, 2
of which terminated fatally. As fever prevailed in this house a short time