View report page

32
dust was small, and the requests to remove it, which came chiefly
from persons who never will put a "D" in their windows,
amounted to 1,445.
The number of bodies deposited in the Mortuary was only
52 against 82 in the previous year. Several of the bodies were
removed from rooms in which the living must have remained
with the dead if there had not been any Mortuary to which the
dead could have been removed. The plans for a new Mortuary
have been in abeyance in consequence of the negociations for a
new road to Homerton, near the Tramway Company's Stables
having failed for the present, and the access to the proposed site
being most readily obtainable by this road. The mode of access
to, and the internal arrangements of the present Mortuary have
been much improved, so that the necessity for a new building
is not so urgent as it was in the early part of last year. Still,
the present Mortuary does not afford sufficient accommodation
for the wants of the Parish in times of an outbreak of infectious
diseases. As most of those who die in the Asylums Board
hospitals are now buried from the hospital where they die
instead of being taken home, the strain on the resources of
the Mortuary has been somewhat lessened.
I have attended every meeting of the Board during the
year, and 49 meetings of the Sanitary and other Committees,
viz.: 31 of Sanitary Committee, 11 of View Committee, 6 of
the Mortuary Committee, and 1 of the General Purposes
Committee.
The weather in January and February, 1883, was unusually
warm, so that the mortality from diseases of the lungs was
smaller than usual during those months, whilst in March, from
the 6th to the end, it was very cold, with frequent falls of snow
against rain in Jauuary and February. The mean temperature
of January was nearly 3.0 deg. and of February 31 deg. above
the mean of the previous 42 years, whilst for March it was as
much as 5.7 deg. below the mean of the same period. The
mean temperature at Greenwich was lower in March than in