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117
are given, for the several registration districts, street by
street, in Table XV.
The excessive deaths of young children under five, the
relatively heavy mortality from measles, and the progressive
fatality of diphtheria, are unfavourable items in the
mortuary returns. But on the other hand there was
a diminution (as compared with the previous year) in the
mortality from hooping cough and fever, a great decrease in
that from scarlet fever, a total absence of deaths from smallpox,
and the general mortality was low. On the whole, I
think we may properly congratulate ourselveson the fact that
Camberwell has shared in the general healthiness of the
Metropolis, and that the year 1889 has been a year of unusual,
if not of unprecedented, low death-rate.
Table XVI gives a summary of the sanitary work
done by your Inspectors in the course of the year endingMarch
25th, 1890. The amount is very considerable. But
as I anticipated would be the case, the primary inspections
have fallen off considerably, and their total number is
nearly 2,000 less than in the previous year, and not half so
many as were carried out annually a few years since. But
re-inspections, for the purpose of seeing that works required
to be done have been duly carried out, have largely
increased. The explanation is simple, and has been given
in former Reports. It is that during the last few years the
inspectors, acting under my directions, have paid more and
more close attention to defects of drainage; which implies
a much closer and more exhaustive examination of premises
than they had been in the habit formerly of bestowing
thereon ; and a much more frequent subsequent