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1 am afraid this plan is almost impracticable. It has been often spoken of and
written about, but no attempt that I am aware of has been made to carry out
the suggestion. Mr. Battram further says, that he visited a house
fifteen or twenty times before he eould get the rooms and clothes disinfected.
Mr. Battram adds, that he has been informed that persons who have died
from fever, in the Fever Hospital, are taken from thence to the residence of
their relations, where they remain until they are buried. In such cases
means should be adopted to prevent this fertile source of spreading disease.
All patients dying of contagious disease in hospitals should be buried from
the hospital, or the corpses should bo removed, under approved regulations,
to a mortuary, and kept there until they are buried.
Sanitary Condition of the Whitechapel District in 1852.
As I thought it might be interesting to some of the inhabitants of this
District to know its sanitary condition in 1852, in order to enable them to
compare it with that which it now presents, I have added to this Report the
following extracts from the Report of Dr. Sutherland, Medical Superintending
Inspector to the General Board of Health, on the Sanitary Condition of the
Epidemic Districts in the Whitechapel Union, dated 12th October, 1852.
Whitechapel Union.
" The annual deaths in the Union, from all causes, on an average of
years from 1838 to 1844, amounted to 29 in 1,000, showing it to be the
most unhealthy of all the 38 metropolitan districts except two, West London
and St. Saviour's. In the year 1839 the proportion of deaths from epidemic
disease was nearly 20 per cent, of the whole mortality; nearly one half of
the total deaths occurred in children under 10 years of age: the excess of
deaths in that year over those incident to healthy localities was 768, or above
33 per cent, of the whole 'mortality." In the year 1873, the rate of mortality
in this District, deducting from the total deaths the 393 of nonresidents,
which occurred in the London Hospital, was 26.5 per 1000. In
the preceding year the rate of mortality, after making the deduction of the
deaths of non-residents was 26.3.
" In 1832, at the period of the first epidemic of Cholera, Whitechapel
District contained a population of 52,848, and there were 470 deaths from
Cholera, or about 1 death in 113 of the population.
" In 1849, the next epidemic year, the population had increased to
78,590, and the deaths from Cholera were 506, or 1 in 155, besides 155
deaths from Diarrhoea, which raised the whole mortality from the epidemic
to 661, or 1 in about 119.
" SwaMoiv's-gardens.—This place is inhabited by very poor people;
there are no drains, and each house has a cesspool."
" St. Mark's-terrace, Tenter-ground.—In this ground there are 15 dungheaps,
and it is a receptacle for all sorts of decayed vegetable matter and
fish guts, There is no surface drainage, and the water lies in stagnant