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better calculated than establishments of this description
to ensure the safety of children of a tender age, who are
manifestly incapable of taking care of themselves, and whose
parents are equally incompetent to give them the attention
they require. It is therefore earnestly to be hoped that
some arrangement of this kind will ere long be introduced
in this extensive district, and generally adopted throughout
the metropolis, since, independently of a diminution of such
lamentable accidents as those alluded to, many collateral
advantages to the humber classes could not fail to result.
An analysis of the table under which the mortality caused
by various diseases is stated, showed that only one fatal case
of diphtheria was recorded during the year in your district.—
This fact is undoubtedly a subject for congratulation, as
showing that this district is less unhealthy than is generally
supposed, since, we know from the various returns relative to
that malady, that the most numerous cases attended with a
fatal result have occurred in the more favoured parts of
London, which it might be expected, a priori, would be less
likely to be subject to such a visitation.
Another prominent consideration which I again urge
upon the Board is the benefit which cannot fail to bederived
from the building of lodging-houses for the poor; if it be found
possible, but above all, the building of public washhouses
and baths, and the erection of fountains in the public ways.
Your officers of Health, and Inspectors of Nuisances, may do
much to destroy the common pestilential filth of the district,
but they have no power against personal dirt. To remove
this you must proceed by the slower influence of opportunity
and invitation. You may talk to the poor till your tongue