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7
disease, arising out of the filth, the overcrowding,
the defective diet, and the many bad and improvident
habits of the poor and the reckless. There
it is that the principles of sanitary medicine, and
the legislation of a watchful government can be best
applied. This, I am sure you will say, is amply
illustrated by what follows.
On looking at the death-rates of the several
districts and sub-districts of the territory over which
you have jurisdiction, it will be seen that their
proportions differ in a very remarkable manner, and
that they have contributed very unequally towards
the general aggregate; for, while the total mortality
of the whole City is at the rate of 22 per 1,000 of
the inhabitants, that of the several sub-divisions is
from 15 to 30 in the 1,000. In the City of London
Union, for example, the mortality has been from 15
to 19 in the 1,000; and in that division of the
metropolis which forms the Eastern part of the
City the number of deaths has been from 22 to 28
in the 1,000; and worse still in one of the most
densely crowded of all the metropolitan subdistricts—namely,
the Southern part of the West
London Union, the mortality has risen to 30 in the
1,000.
Now, although we can have no hesitation in concluding
that in the last case there must have been a
frightful sacrifice of human life—for the mortality