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10 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON.
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 average figures 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
cognizant 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.