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18
The fact upon which all calculations relating to the mortality of any place must
necessarily be based is population; now the population of this Parish, according to the rate of
increase from 1851 to 1861, when the Census was taken, ought to be 26,512 souls, or in round
numbers 26,500, which I believe to be nearly correct.
Eight hundred and eighty-one children, 434 males, and 447 females, were born during
the elapsed year, giving a small fraction more than 33 births for every 1,000 inhabitants,
which is about the average all over Great Britain, and an increase of 22 births on the year
preceding, the increase of births being exactly proportioned to the supposed increase of population.
There were registered 664 deaths, namely: 354 males and 310 females. This representation
of the mortality is not, however, perfectly correct, because it is erroneous to include in
the mortality the deaths of 17 persons upon whose bodies inquests were held, and who, not
belonging to the place, were found dead in it or washed ashore from the Thames. These 17
deducted from 664 leave 647, upon which number our calculations must be made.
There died, then, last year in Rotherhithe, about 24 persons in the 1,000, which is a little
above the average death rate of the whole of London in previous years. This increase may
be explained by the fact that this Parish, in common with almost every other metropolitan
Parish, was visited last year by two epidemic diseases, viz.: the small pox and typhoid
fever.
Small pox broke out early in the year 1863, and during the spring and summer months
spread itself in this locality. The alarm excited in the public mind by its appearance caused
every human effort to be made to stay its progress, and apparently with some success.
The children in all the public schools were examined and either vaccinated or re vaccinated,
and hundreds of other children and adults underwent the same operation. The disease
gradually died away in the winter, still, however, a solitary case of small pox occasionally
shows itself.
Typhoid fever, which had been nearly absent from the neighbourhood for some years,
and very rarely manifested itself sporadically among us, gave signs of its presence in the year
1862, during which year (25th March, 1862, to 25th March, 1863) 16 deaths were registered
from that malady. In the months of April and May, 1863, it attacked the inmates of the
miserable tenements in Fisher's-court. It travelled thence to Hanover-street, New-place,
Cross-alley, Kenning's-buildings, Eve's place, Adam's-gardens, Staples-rents, William-street,
and other places. The only parts of the Parish which seem to have been free, or nearly free,
from the complaint, were the line of Rotherhithe-street along the waterside, Paradise-row, and
the Deptford Lower-road. I have no means of ascertaining the relative population of the
eastern and western divisions of Rotherhithe, but certainly the cases of fever were far more
numerous in the western than in the eastern district, the proportion being about 1 in the
eastern for 9 in the western. This may be, to a certain extent, explained by the more
crowded state of the western district, and by the fact that above 200 acres of the eastern,
occupied by the Surrey and Commercial Docks, are open space, allowing free circulation of
the air, which must be conducive to the healthfulness of any place.
It would not be proper here to attempt to discuss whether typhus and typhoid fever be
the same disease or perfectly distinct in their nature and origin, as some have asserted, but it
is quite true that the two maladies often showed themselves simultaneously among the
inmates of the same house, and sometimes among members of the same family.