Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for St James's, Westminster]
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under notice during the year; many cases not being
known in consequence of there being no law requiring
notice of such cases to be given to the Sanitary authority.
Of these 84 cases 3 were of Small Pox, 78 of Fever,
and 3 of Diphtheria. 43 cases—40 of Fever and 3 of
Small Pox—were removed to extra-Parochial Hospitals.
During the year 1880 fifty-seven bodies were removed
into the Mortuary. Of these bodies five were cases of
infectious disease in which disinfection was required, and
where the removal of the corpse was probably the means
of preventing the spread of infectious disease. In fortythree
cases bodies were removed from the presence of
families mostly living in a single room, and where, but
for the public Mortuary, the living would have lived and
slept in presence of a decomposing corpse, and, possibly,
a post-mortem examination would have been made before
the interment could take place. In six cases the bodies
have been those of casual strangers—homeless, or
occurring in Hotels or Lodging-houses. Upon bodies
lying in the mortuary, twenty-two Inquests have been
held and twenty post-mortem examinations have been
made for judicial purposes. Three bodies were those of
persons who had died in the workhouse of the Westminster
Union.