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REPORT.
To the Board of Works for the Hackney District.
Gentlemen,
In my last Quarterly Report I had the pleasure of laying before you the
mortuary statistics of the District, by which it was shewn that the public
health of Hackney had been unprecedently good during that quarter.
I then stated that we must not look for so low a mortality in other
quarters, unless our climate should so far change as to have the frequent
recurrence of such favourable meteorological conditions as obtained in the
quarter under consideration. There is no doubt that proper sanitary
supervision of a District will materially reduce the death rate, but it will
not do so suddenly; nor will it change, although it will greatly modify, the
mortality that belongs to each season, which is the result, in great part,
of the average temperature.
The observations I have just quoted have been singularly and unfortunately
verified by the temperature and mortality of the past quarter;
for whilst the temperature was nearly 3½ degrees above the average of the
last 88 years, the mortality was 426 against 334 in the quarter ending
July 2nd. The mortality might have been expected to have been above
the average during the quarter ending October 2nd, even if there had not
been any unusual meteorological causes of death, inasmuch as after a
period of very low, we usually get a period of somewhat increased
mortality; but the unusual temperature must be considered as the chief
cause of the great increase in the death rate. I have no doubt when
sanitary measures are more generally and more efficiently carried out, than
the state of the sewerage of this District has hitherto allowed, that an
increase in the mean temperature of a few consecutive weeks, or of a
quarter, will not be attended with so great a proportionate increase in the
death rate as during this quarter.
In seasons which have passed, the rate of death has not varied very
materially during the second and third quarters of the year,—the mortality
of the third having been, except in hot summers, below rather than above
that of the second. This order is likely now to be inverted, for in all large
cities and densely populated places the death rate of the third quarter is