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2
REPORT.
To the Board of Works for Hackney District:
Gentlemen,
In my First Annual Report, written in February last, I observed
that " as we are now entering on a series of warmer years than those we
have lately experienced, it is very probable that diarrhoea and other summer
diseases will prove more fatal than during the last and preceding years."
The opinion thus confidently expressed from a knowledge of the ordinary
meteorological phenomena of London, and of their effect upon health,
has, unfortunately, been completely verified by the very unusual amount
of diarrhoea, bilious and other fevers, which have prevailed in the district
during last quarter. The mortality from these affections, great as it has
been, affords but a very small indication of the amount of disease which
has appeared, for an unusually large proportion of those attacked have
recovered. The information derived from various sources, and the inspections
which I have made in the localities affected, enable me to make
this assertion.
The sanitary precautions which have been adopted is most probably
the chief cause of this low rate of death. The extent to which fever
and diarrhoea have prevailed is shown by the following list of localities
in which I have made house-to-house visitations, viz.: Hammond's
Cottages, Lea Bridge Road ; Bowling-green Street; Falcon Place ; Park
Street; Tyssen Road ; John Street, West Hackney ; Brunswick Grove ;
Sandford Lane ; Shacklewell Row ; Wellington Street; John Street, Homerton
; Brook Street, Homerton ; Park Road, in the Wick; Navarino
Road; Exmouth Place; Henry Street; Castle Street; Cock and Castle
Lane ; Orchard Street; Mount Pleasant Lane ; Assembly Row, Gloucester
Place, Frederick's Place, and Tyssen Place, Brook Street; Caroline
Street; Matthias' Place ; Hindle Street; Tottenham Square ; Jackson's
Buildings; Thomas' Court; Tingey's Buildings ; York Buildings ; Walcot
Place ; Payne's Court; and William Street.
The chief causes of this extensive outbreak appears to be the want of
proper artificial drainage, in consequence of which the soil of the lower becomes
saturated with the filth of the upper localities, and from the unusual
heat of the weather. It is very evident, as the decomposition of moist
vegetable and animal matters depends materially on the temperature to
which they are exposed, both as to the rapidity with which it occurs and the
products resulting therefrom, that an unusually great summer heat must