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6
diarrhœa to be a marked evidence of bad sanitary conditions. I
have, therefore, carefully gone over the death registers for some
years past and find that a large proportion of the deaths have
occurred in West Hackney Registration District, some in
the better class of houses, and others in the smaller. As the per
centage cannot be worked out in consequence of our want of
knowledge of the number of inhabitants in the different
localities, I can only say at present that the whole district has
not suffered so much as all London. This is shown by the
following calculations.

This disease is most fatal in hot weather, as in Hackney 86
per cent. of the deaths in 1876, happened during the 10 warmest
weeks of the year; 68 per cent. in the corresponding period of
1877, when the summer was unusually cold; and 73 per cent. in
1878, when the summer was mostly warm. This subject I
propose working out more fully in a subsequent report.
As Hackney was one of the parishes which was attacked with
small pox at an early period of the epidemic, it was only to be
expected that it should be one amongst those from which it
should depart earliest, and so it has proved, for whilst Greenwich
and other places on the south side of the river have suffered
severely during the autumnal and winter months of 1878.79,
this district has been almost entirely free from it for some time
past. The number of deaths in 1878 was 86, against 179 in
1877, and 92 in 1876, giving a death.rate of 52 per 100,000
population in 1878, against 112 in 1877, and GO in 1876. In
all London the death.rates per 100,000 population were 21 in
1876, 72 in 1877, and 40 in 1878. so that up to the end of 1878,
Hackney had suffered more than the Metropolis at large in the