London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

View report page

Shoreditch 1891

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Shoreditch, Parish of St. Leonard]

This page requires JavaScript

The Vestry of parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch,
IN THE COUNTY OF LONDON.
REPORT OF THE MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH.
Public Health Department,
1st January, 1892.
To the Vestry of St. Leonard, Shoreditch.
Gentlemen,
Hitherto the Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health has been
made for the 12 months ending the 25th March, but in future, under the provisions of
the "Public Health (London) Act, 1891," the Local Government Board have directed
that "He shall prepare an annual report, to be made to the end of December in each
year." As the Act takes effect on the 1st of January, 1892, it appears therefore
desirable to issue my first Report at this date. In order also to enable comparison to
be made between the statistics of 1891 and future years, I have included the
births, deaths, &c., of the first quarter of 1891, which was part of the last
report of my esteemed predecessor, the late Henry Gawen Sutton, M.D., who
for the long period of 25 years acted as Medical Officer of Health to this district.
Dr. Sutton, I may remind you, died on June 9th, 1891, and the Parish was without a
Medical Officer until the 1st September, so that I am not in a position to report so fully
as I might otherwise have done the proceedings which have been taken during the past
year to improve the sanitary condition of the Parish.
STATISTICS OF BIRTHS AND DEATHS, &c.
In the report which I presented to you on the statistics relating to the quarter
ending 3rd October, 1891, I drew your attention to the fact that this Parish, and
especially the more central part, was becoming less used for residential purposes, and
more for business ones; and I also pointed out that in order to ascertain the correct
birth and death rates of the various divisions of the Parish, it was necessary to deduct
from the census figures those persons resident in the Holborn Infirmary, Workhouse,
and in some other institutions, giving for the whole Parish an estimated population of
122,615.
p