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REPORT TO THE VESTRY OF ROTHERHITHE
ON
THE SANITARY CONDITION AND VITAL STATISTICS
OF THE
PARISH OF ROTHERHITHE, SURREY,
FOR THE FINANCIAL YEAR 1882,
BY
BENJ. BROWNING, M.D., S.Sc.C.Edin., L.R.C.P.Lond„ M.R.C.S.E.
Fellow of the Chemical Society of London.
AND
MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH TO THE VESTRY.
Gentlemen,
The report which I have now the honour to submit for your
approval will be found interesting, both as showing that the improved sanitation which
you have actively carried out in Rotherhithe results, even during the general prevalence
of a formidable epidemic, in a saving of money as well as life to those influenced by it,
(for loss of health is loss of money to working people), and that our large increase of
population between the censuses of 1871 and 1881 has not been accompanied by the
usual commensurate increase of mortality in a poor London district, the natural
tendency of which is not to become healthier, but to deteriorate, unless sanitary
enactments are fairly carried out.
“Hie deeennium,” to quote the Registrar General's words, “which has just closed,
was one of lower mortality than any of the preceding decimal periods for which trustworthy
data are forthcoming,” and the latter half is found to have been more healthy
than the former one, whilst the saving of life was due to diminution of the preventable
or zymotic diseases, which, of all cases of death, are most readily affected by systematic
and efficient action on the part of a Sanitary Authority through its Committee and
Officers. During the past 40 years our zymotic mortality was almost unaltered in the
first three decades, but in that just ended, it was quite 25 percent. lower than before.
This advantage may perhaps be credited in a measure, to the fact that we had no
epidemic of cholera, and till lately, but little small-pox, in the time alluded: but this
cannot be said of the “fever” deaths, “fevers” being, doubtless, as much as any other
maladies, reducible by sanitary action. In the ten years just passed, the fever death
rate fell more than 60 percent. below the average of the thirty years preceding them,