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Annual Report.
To the Board of Works for the Hackney District.
Gentlemen,
This year has not been so healthy as either 1860 or 1859, but
more healthy than 1858. The extreme cold in the early part
of the year produced an immense mortality from diseases of the
lungs and from old age; whilst the unusually high temperature of
the last five months has been coincident with an excessive number
of deaths from zymotic diseases, amongst which, I regret to
number, fever. The unusual mortality from fevers of all kinds,
has not been confined either to Hackney, or to the Metropolis at
large, but has prevailed, more or less, throughout the whole of
England. It is also worthy of remark that fever has not been
epidemic chiefly in the houses of the poor, but has invaded, to a
great extent, the dwellings of the rich. If we glance over
the localities enumerated in my last Quarterly Report as those
in which fever has caused deaths in this district, we shall
see that the same holds good here to a great extent. The places
however in which it has raged most furiously, have been those in
which the drainage was defective, and the smell from unavoidable