Report from the Select Committee on Contagious Fever in London / ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 20 May 1818.
- Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee on Contagious Fever in London.
- Date:
- [1818?]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Report from the Select Committee on Contagious Fever in London / ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 20 May 1818. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.
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![Sixteenth Report of the Institution for the Cure and Prevention of Conta- gious Fevers in the Metropolis. April 24, 1818. Remained in the house, April 25th 1817 - - - - 16 Admitted since, in typhus 760] in scarlet fever - 21 781 797 Dismissed cured ------ 695 - - - - as improper 1 Died 62 Remain in the house - - - - - - -39 797 Total number of the Patients admitted since the opening of the House of Recovery in 1802 2,113 It was stated in the last annual Report, that contagious fever had begun to spread among the poor of the eastern parts of the Metropolis, during the winter, to an unusual extent, and was likely, under the existing circumstances of scarcity and general distress, to become epidemic. It will be manifest, from the numbers of the preceding statement, that this anticipation has been fully verified, and that an epide- mic fever has prevailed, and indeed continues to prevail among the poor of this Metropolis, to an extent quite unprecedented in the annals of this institution, and probably much exceeding that which occurred subsequently to the scarcity of 1799 and 1800, which demanded the establishment of a House of Recovery, and gave origin to this valuable charity. In fact, the number of patients admitted in the past year ex- ceeds the total number admitted in the course of the subsequent twelve years. On the present melancholy occasion, the fever was first observed to spread in the close and crowded alleys of the eastern and north-eastern parts of the town, especially in Shadwell, Wnitechapel, about Shoreditch, Old-street Road, Clerkenwell, and the filthy receptacles of poverty about Saffron-hill and near Smithfield. In consequence of the over-crowded state of the workhouses in all these districts, and from the necessity under which they were daily compelled to receive inmates already infected, from the streets, or their deserted habitations, those places became early the seats of much contagion ; which though greatly checked and subdued by the speedy removal of the infected to the House of Recovery, and other means, was continually kept up or reproduced, by suc- cessive importations of the sick from without; for during the summer and autumnal months, especially from July to November, the fever was unceasingly generated in the private habitations of the poor, in the districts already mentioned. It became also very prevalent in the parishes of St. George and St. Saviour, in the vicinity of Kent-street, Southwark ; and at length occurred partially in various other parts of the town; so that many individuals were received into the House of Recovery, from the courts about Shoe-lane and Fleet-market, Holborn, Gray's-Inn Lane, Blackfriars, Chancery-lane, Clare-market, and other parts of the parish of St. Clement's, from the Strand and the Haymarket; and in the month of December it reached the parish of St. Giles ; that notorious resort of paupers of every description having hitherto nearly escaped the infection. In Somers Town also, and other parts of the parish of St. Pancras, as well as in its workhouse, the contagion has pretty constantly prevailed, and it has even reached Newington, Walworth, Hackney, Hampstead and other places in the immediate vicinity, from which several patients have been sent to the House of Recovery. The extent and general prevalence of this epidemic fever, will however be still more manifest, when it is added, that from the month of July last to the present time, there has been such a constant influx of the infected from all these districts, that not only the wards of the House of Recovery, appropriated to typhus, but those also set apart for scarlet fever, have been almost constantly filled. During the autumnal months, indeed, the number of admissions amounted to 22 or 23 weekly and that of the patients in the house generally to about 60, a number nearly equal to the annual average of the preceding 12 years. On two or three occasions, indeed, it has happened that patients have been temporarily excluded for want of room. The rapid progress and extent of this epidemic, cannot indeed be deemed a matter of surprise, when the circumstances now to be mentioned, indicative of its infectious](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2130001x_0020.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
