Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A healthy year in London / [Charles Dickens]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![familiar in their Mouths as JECOITSSSO ’ —Shakespeare. HOUSEHOLD WORDS, v . ' f' A WEEKLY JOIJEML 24 CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DiCK^Sr-^— /;*. N°- 388.] SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 1857. A-4' 0 “Stamped 3cZ. A HEALTHY YEAR IN LONDON. By the one hundred and thirty-second sec- tion of the Aletropolis Local Management Act, it was ordained about two years ago that there should be appointed by the Board of Works, which represents the vestry in each London parish, a Medical Officer of Health, whose duty it should be “ to ascertain the existence of diseases, more especially epi- demics increasing the rate of mortality,” and who also should ‘‘take cognisance of the fact of the existence of diseases.” By an instructional minute of the General Board of Health, dated on the twentieth of the December before last, the duties of these medical officers of health were further de- fined : they were not only to show the exist- ence of preventible diseases, to point out methods of removing them, and to insist on their removal, but they were also to collect and diffuse general information upon sanitary matters, and to serve as sanitary referees to the parishioners on whose behalf they were retained. The raising of the corps of sani- tary soldiers thus established was not com- pleted until March, in the year eighteen ’fifty-six. Some vestries had their officers of health appointed earlier, but the first year’s work for the improved health of London was supposed to begin in March of last year, and to end in March of this year ; when the Act of Parliament required that each officer of health, in addition to any weekly, monthly, or half-yearly reports that he might furnish to the board with which he worked, should write an annual report for publication by the vestry. The publication of these annual reports, by the several Lon- don parishes, has been recently completed. We have made it our business to read them all, together with many of the monthly and half-yearly reports by which they were pre- ceded. We have not only read, but we have also marked them and digested them, and the result of our study is now at the service of the reader. It gives us much of the story of a healthy year in London. There is not a fact or a suggestion in the sketch we are now writing which has not been drawn from the recent reports of the London officers of health, and there has been hardly a report issued that will not contribute to it, indirectly or di- rectly, some fact or opinion. The year in question was a healthy one. In ’fifty-six, deaths from all causes in town fell short of the average of the four former years by five thousand eight hundred and sixty- eight ; and in the spring of this year the mor- tality was five hundred and forty-six below tlie average. We do not attribute this to the exertions of the health officers and sani- tary inspectors ; but when we come presently to take a glance at the work actually done for the improvement of our wholesomeness, it will be evident tliat some of the life saved has been saved by the increase of attention paid to what is necessary for the maintenance of health. Let us confirm our minds upon this subject, and at the same time fortify them against any undue despondency when we fall upon details of our present state that are disheart- ening and sickening, by looking at the in- crease of health and duration of life actually produced by improvement in the public sense of what is wholesome. In London, in the year seventeen hundred, one person died out of every twenty-five. Fifty years later one died out of every twenty-one. In the first year of the present century there died only one in thirty-five, and in eighteen ’thirty one in forty-five. Mr. Bianchi, of St. Sa- viour’s, reminds us of that. Again, Mr. Rendle, the health officer for the parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark, reminds the public, that in the great plague year of sixteen ’fifty-five there died out of that parish one person in every four ; but that the loss ill modern pestilences is one in thirty, forty, or sixty. His district is now one of the worst in London, and one of the most densely peopled ; but he does not look back with envy to the day when its population was much thinner—a century and a-half ago ; when all the alleys were blind alleys, and thoroughfares gloried in filthiness; when people had an address by Harrow Dung-hill, or in Dirty-lane, or Melancholy-walk, and Labour-in-vain-alley—dens of life interspersed among good buildings and spacious gardens. At the present time we may represent the effect of unwholesome influences on a town population by the evidence of Dr. Letheby, that in some parts of the City of London the VOL. XVI. 388](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22466010_0003.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
