In the following years “the mortality was seriously increasing there.”
In 1870 smallpox broke out first in it, and 25 cases occurred in a short time. During the same year the deaths in Chapel Place from three classes of disease—the zymotic, pulmonary, and tubercular—having been 17, the death-rate to population was 70 per 1,000 without reckoning those from other causes.
In 1871 the general mortality was 50 per cent. greater in it than that in the parish, whilst that of cholera was four times greater.
In 1874, nine cases of typhoid and typhus fevers occurred in it, “and the locality was conspicuous for diseases and premature deaths.”
In 1876 scarlet fever was prevalent.
Asked what class of disease the people chiefly suffer from, the Medical Officer of Health replied:—
“Mostly from debility—zymotic diseases, and infectious diseases—such as whooping cough, typhus, typhoid fever, cholera, diarrhœa, measles, scarlet-fever, &c., &c., smallpox, and gin liver disease…. They are obliged to resort to gin on account of the close and depressing condition in which the people live in these Courts free from the public eye.
“The women have to stop at home; they do not get out, and therefore do not get any excitement. Then they take their drops. You can often see women at twelve o’clock in the day drinking in public-houses.”
The Parochial District Medical Officer said:—