View report page

73
The deaths from zymotic diseases were generally much
less numerous than those in 1884. Hooping-cough fell from
173 to 136; Measles from 171 to 91; Diphtheria from 78 to
68; Scarlet Fever from 82 to 20; Fever from 40 to 27; and
Diarrhoea from 240 to 135. But Small-pox rose from 34 to
154, a larger mortality from this disease than Ave have had
in any year excepting 1881, when the Small-pox deaths
amounted to 190.
There were indications in the last quarter of 1884 that
an outbreak of the disease was impending; and during the
first six months of 1885 it was at least as prevalent as it has
been at any time since the recrudescence of the disease in
1871. 53 deaths were registered in the first quarter of the year,
and 79 in the second. In the third quarter the mortality fell to
14, and in the fourth quarter to 8. As usual, Peckham
suffered disproportionately; one fatal case was due to Dulwich;
24 to Camberwell: 24 to St. George's; and 105 to
Peckham. 103 of these deaths occurred among patients
removed to hospitals, and 51 among those who were treated
-at home.
It will, perhaps, be recollected that in my last annual
report I referred to a limited outbreak of true Typhus,
attended with one death, which occurred towards the end of
the year in Verney Flats, a tenement house situated in No. 2
Ward, close to Rotherliithe, and was soon suppressed. Some
months later a more serious outbreak of the disease commenced
in a part of the Parish, at least a mile away from A erney
Flats, separated from it by the Canal, and among persons who
had had, so far as we could ascertain, no communication
whatever with the locality first affected. My attention was
called to the outbreak by hearing that three cases of Fever
had been removed within a few days from one house in How-