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before this severe outbreak of the disease the house was inspected and orders
were given for the limewhiting of the rooms, the better drainage of the yard
and privy, and for the removal of the occupants of the basement, which was
at the time illegally occupied. All these orders were duly complied with.
Four persons were laid up at the same time with fever at No. 14, Gun Street,
which house was likewise duly inspected and the rooms limewhited. The
deaths from small-pox declined from 17 in the corresponding quarter of the previous
year to 6; measles from 33 to 4; hooping cough from 15 to 7; and diarrlicea
from 22 to 12. Only one death from diphtheria is recorded. This disease is
therefore either of rare occurrence in this district or the deaths from this
disease are registered under another name. The deaths from diseases of the
lungs are 123 against 103 in the corresponding quarter of 1862; the deaths
from consumption are 76; from disease of the heart 23. No less than 46
deaths of children are registered under the convenient form of convulsions !
Burns and scalds were fatal to 20 persons. Under this head I suppose must
be registered the deaths of two children under two years of age, whose deaths
are thus recorded, "violent drinking water accidentally!"
In the Aldgate Sub-District the death of a child 14 days old is thus recorded
"Phlegmasia." Tetanus or locked jaw was fatal to a man aged 63. The
deaths arising from accidents or negligence are 53, of these 17 were from
violence, 2 from drowning, 7 from suicide, 1 from manslaughter, and 5 from
suffocation, 4 of which were infants under 1 year, and 1, a wine cooper's child,
aged 4 years, who died from suffocation, but how produced is not recorded.
The number of inquests held during the quarter is 72, of which 47 were
held in the London Hospital. No inquest was held on the body of a child,
aged 2 years, daughter of a journeyman tailor, residing at No. 5, Gun Street,
whose death was caused by burns.
My attention has been directed to the fact that several deaths of young
children occurred in one week in the neighbourhood of Buck's Bow and Little
North Street. There are recorded by the Local Begistrar the death of a child
at 28, North Street, aged 1 month, from sloughing of the lower part of the
abdomen; and the deaths of 2 children, aged respectively 7 months and 8
months, from abcess in the neck, the one at No. 2, Elizabeth Place and the other
at No. 1, Queen Ann Street, both of which places are in the neighbourhood of
Buck's Bow. In this neighbourhood, which is now becoming excessively
crowded, there are three bone-boiling establishments and a knacker's yard,
from all of which most offensive smells, arising from the decomposition of
animal matter, are given off, which I need scarcely say are highly prejudicial
to health. Much has certainly been done to remedy the nuisance arising
from these businesses, and more is promised to be carried out, but so long
as large accumulations of bones in a state of decomposition remain on these
several premises ill health and premature death will occur in this vicinity.
It is true that bone-boiling and other similarly offensive trades have been
carried on in this neighbourhood for a great many years and have frequently