As materials which may aid you to estimate the sanitary defects of the City, I subjoin two tables[14] illustrating the relative mortality of the several sub-districts. The first of these tables indicates numerically the local distribution of the year’s deaths, and gives their proportion to the population of each district and sub-district. The second relates particularly to the last quarter, and illustrates the pressure of the epidemic. The two together furnish a synoptical view of the several rates of mortality, as calculated for the entire City, for the Unions separately, for the sub-districts separately; and for the last quarter of the year separately. In the tedious process of constructing these tables, I have been careful to avoid every source of inaccuracy, and believe that they present you with a true measure of the health of the City during the past year.
[14] I have not reprinted these tables quite as here described. The local distribution of the 3763 deaths of the year is given in the [Appendix, No. III.]; and the sub-district death-rates of the year, as nearly as I can get them, in a [note] overleaf, [page 6]. The high mortality of this summer quarter (in which 1395 persons died) will be best appreciated by the reader in referring to [Appendix, No. XIV.]; where it can be compared with the mortality of similar periods of time in the four other years there accounted for.—J. S., 1854.
From these comparative tables it will be observed, that the high mortality of the population does not affect the entire City equally; that, in some of its portions, the rate of death approaches the minimum standard much more nearly than in others; that in those districts where the general rate is best, the temporary aggravation from epidemic causes has likewise been least; and that our aggregate City rate, either for ordinary times or for a period of epidemic disease, is compounded from the joint result of several very different proportions. Reference to the Registrar-General’s tables will enable any one to see that the ordinary rate of mortality for the West London Union is a fourth higher than the rate for the City of London Union, while the rate for the East London Union bears a still higher proportion; and these very different rates are, as it were, merged in the one aggregate rate, struck for the whole City, as comprising the three unions referred to. It will be obvious, therefore, that many parts of the City are much healthier than this aggregate rate would signify, while others are much unhealthier. In regard of last year, for instance, the aggregate rate of mortality was (as I have stated) 30 per thousand of the general population of the City: but if this rate be analysed by examination of the sub-district mortality, it will be seen that in one sub-district the rate of death stood nearly as low as 20; that in another sub-district of the same union it rose to 36, and in a third sub-district (of another union) to within a small fraction of 40.[15]
[15] On account of changes of population shown by the subsequent Census, these figures would require correction. The death-rates per thousand in the several sub-districts were probably about as follows, viz.:—
| EAST LONDON UNION. | W. L. UNION. | CITY OF LONDON UNION. | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| St. Botolph. | Cripplegate. | North. | South. | S. W. | N. W. | South. | S. E. | N. E. |
| 261⁄2 | 32 | 34 | 41 | 38 | 22 | 24 | 212⁄3 | 22 |
J. S., 1854.
If it were possible to furnish you with statistics derived from a still smaller sub-division of each district, these points would be infinitely more manifest. In some limited localities of the City you would probably find an approximation to the average mortality of suburban districts; while in other spots, if they were isolated for your contemplation, you would see houses, courts, and streets where the habitual proportion of deaths is far beyond the heaviest pestilence-rate known for any metropolitan district aggregately—localities, indeed, where the habitual rate of death is more appalling than any which such averages can enable you to conceive.
These facts are quite unquestionable, and I have felt it my duty to bring them under your notice as pointedly and impressively as I can; feeling assured, as I do, that so soon as you are cognisant of them, every motive of humanity, no less than of economical prudence, must engage you to investigate with me, whether or not there may lie within your reach any adoptable measures for lessening this large expenditure of human life, and for relieving its attendant misery. It is, therefore, with the deepest feeling of responsibility that I proceed to fulfil the main object of my First Annual Report, by tracing these effects to their causes, and by explaining to you, from a year’s observation and experience, what seem to me the chief influences prevailing against life within the City of London.
My remarks for this purpose will fall under the following heads, viz.:—
- [I.] Defective house-drainage;
- [II.] Incomplete and insufficient water-supply;
- [III.] Offensive or injurious trades and occupations;
- [IV.] Intramural burials;
- [V.] Houses insusceptible of ventilation, and absolutely unfit for habitation;
- [VI.] The personal habits of the lowest classes, and the influence of destitution in increasing their mortality.