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following streets have 12 in. sewers, but their gradients vary; for
Prince Edward Road and Windsor Terrace the gradient is 1 in
2,000; part of Daintry Street 1 in 756, and the remainder of
Daintry Street, 1 in 280; Chapman Road, 1 in 300; in Victoria
Road the gradient varies from 1 in 176 to 1 in 416; the 5 ft. 6 in.
barrel sewer of Windsor Road has a fall of about 1 in 2,500 and
the Gainsborough Road 15 in. sewer has a fall of 1 in 600. The
houses are drained mostly on the combined system, in blocks of
from five to fifteen, into 9 in. drains, passing into back areas and
connected with the road sewers. The gradient of these house
drains is very small, an average being about 1 in 120.
The whole of the drainage of Hackney Wick is carried into the
Council's Hackney Wick branch of the Low Level sewer in Windsor
Road, which also receives the Tottenham sewage, and the gradients
of the Vestry's sewers is entirely dependent upon the depth of the
Council's sewer. I am informed that the level of the sewage in the
Council's sewer is generally above the outlet of the Vestry's sewers,
so that there is always sewage standing in some of the latter sewers,
for some distance from the outlets, and in times of floods this sewage
is dammed back into the yards of houses and roads.
Statistics.—With respect to the complaint that the deaths were
abnormally high during the four weeks ending July 1st, I have to
state that on consulting the death returns I find there were 17 deaths
only in Hackney Wick, 5 under one year and 12 above. Of those
under one year 2 deaths occurred from diarrhoea, and 3 from
diseases other than zymotic; of the 12 above one year, 4 died from
scarlet fever, and four from diarrhœa, the remaining from other
diseases. These 17 deaths give an annual general death rate of 31.7
per 1,000; an infant mortality of 265 per 1,000 births and
a zymotic death rate of 18.6 per 1,000. These are
much higher than the same rates for the whole of
Hackney or; all London for the same period; but any deduction
from these figures as to the healthiness of Hackney Wick
would be entirely misleading, for it is a fundamental principle in
statistics that the accuracy of any deductions increases with the
number of observation and vice versa. Briefly, the period to which
these rates apply is too short to be any guide to the true rates
for Hackney Wick. I have therefore calculated from the returns
the general death-rate, infantile death-rate, and zymotic death-rate
for Hackney Wick and the whole of Hackney for the years 1891 to