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2. That there should be an officer appointed in each Registration
district to enforce the provisions of the Vaccination Act, and that such
officer should be the Registrar of Births. This would be a much better
arrangement than that recommended by the Select Committee, which is,
that the Vaccination Officer and the Registrar of Births should be distinct
persons.
3. That the Medical Department of the Privy Council should have
entrusted to them the entire duty of administering the laws as regards
Vaccination, the appointment and the payment (which should be by salary)
of the public vaccinators.
In my last report I mentioned several instances of the carelessness or
indifference of some of the working classes as regards the danger of contagion
from small-pox; and I have now further to record another case of similar disregard
to the danger of communicating the disease. In Walton's Court, a
child died from small-pox; the body of this child was kept for four days on
the ground floor room, in which there were three other children suffering from
the same disease. When the Inspector visited the house there were two
women in the room, who informed him that two persons lived up-stairs, and,
from the faulty construction of the house, these lodgers had to pass through
the ground-floor room in which the children lay suffering from small-pox,
whenever they went out or returned home.
Disinfecting Apparatus.
From a report of the Inspectors it appears that from the 20th April to
the 20th June, twenty-two applications have been made for the disinfection
of beds, bedding, and wearing apparel; all of which have been submitted to
the action of a heat of about 250° under their inspection and that of the
Superintendent of the Stone Yard where the apparatus is erected.
The Inspectors in every instance attended to the conveyance of the
bedding, &c., to the Stone Yard, and to the re-conveyance of the same to
the houses of the respective applicants. No charge has, in any instance,
been made either for the disinfection of clothes, &c., or for the carriage of
the articles to and from the disinfecting apparatus.
Census Returns, 1871.
Since the publication of my last quarterly Report, the census of the
United Kingdom has been taken, and the Registrar-General has published
tables of the population and houses, enumerated in England and Wales, and
in the Islands of the British Seas, on the 2nd April, 1871. From this
return, it appears that the population of the Whitechapel District is 76,332,
or 2,638 less than in 1861, when the population was 78,970.
The excess of registered births over registered deaths in the ten years
1861-71, is 446;* but if the deaths in the London Hospital of 2621
* According to the returns of the Registrar-General the excess of births over deaths in
the 10 years is only 400.