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SANITARY REPORT, 1871.
To the Board of Works for the Hackney District.
Gentlemen,
The epidemic of Small Pox which has caused so very large
a mortality this year in the Metropolis, viz: 7,876 out of a
total of 80,332 deaths, or nearly one tenth of the whole, was
remarkable not so much for the period of its occurrence as for
its great extent and severity. As I pointed out in my last
report, there is a very decided tendency for eruptive fevers to
assume an epidemic form, in the Metropolis, about once in four
years, and then gradually to cause only their ordinary death
rate. As this period is nearly the same in the Metropolis as
regards Whooping Cough, Small Pox, Measles, and Scarlet
Fever, it rarely happens that we have more than one or two of
these diseases epidemic at the same time, so that the comparative
mortality from these diseases has oscillated since my
appointment within moderate limits; the mean death-rate from
all maladies included in class 1, being in this district about 21
per cent. of the whole. This year, however, 400 deaths from
Small Pox, 76 from Whooping Cough, and 122 from Diarrhcea,
have raised the per centage to no less than 28.2 per cent. which