Chapter 5

[30]With the required correction for increase of population, the death-rate was probably about 21·25per1000.

Last year it was my painful duty to record the ravages of pestilence, then indeed hardly terminated, under the pressure of which our general death-rate had arisen to the alarmingheight of thirty in the thousand. On this present occasion, I have the happier task of laying before you the evidences of a mortality lessened considerably below its habitual average; and I rejoice in congratulating your Hon. Court on the testimony thus borne to the success of your sanitary exertions. For although, without question, some large share of this striking improvement may have depended on circumstances beyond our cognizance or control; although it may in part be but an instance of that tendency to periodical alternations of activity and repose which we recognise in disease, as in other operations of nature; although I should be over-sanguine if I believed, and premature if I stated, that your sanitary measures during the past twelve months had wrought such a change in the City as to ensure a continuance of this year’s comparative healthfulness; yet I may venture without hesitation to assure you, that the labours of the Commission have been fruitful of real and demonstrable advantage to the health of the people; that a sensible diminution has occurred in the physical causes of disease; and that, from various and disinterested sources, I hear grateful mention of improvements which you have effected.

In confirmation of this assurance, I may inform your Hon. Court that, in collecting my materials for the present statement, I solicited from the Union-Surgeons of the whole City of London certain particulars of information which they were peculiarly able to furnish; I inquired of them, namely, whether, during the past year, there had prevailed among the poorer classes in their several districts more or less than the ordinary pressure of epidemic, endemic, and infectious disease; and whether, in case of such difference having been observed, they could refer it, either for betteror worse, to any changes recently wrought in the physical conditions of their respective neighbourhoods. They have had the kindness to furnish me with the information requested of them; and their replies testify with remarkable uniformity, both to the abatement of disease within their several provinces of practice, and to the considerable dependence of that improved condition of health on sanitary works effected under your auspices.

In order to form a correct estimate of the average mortality in any district, it is indispensable that one’s records should extend over many years. Thus only is it that fallacies can be avoided which arise from the alternate pressure and remittance of epidemic disease. The havoc effected by a periodical visitation of influenza, cholera, or plague, varies, in like manner as the ordinary death-rate varies, in different localities; and its variation contributes importantly to fix the healthiness or unhealthiness of such localities. But obviously, if we wish for practical purposes to calculate an annual rate of mortality, and to decide, in respect of any district, what are the chances of life for its population, we must distribute the peculiar mortality of the pestilence-period over those years which intervene between visitations of the pestilence.

Hitherto, in respect of the City of London, I have the record of only two years; two years differing from one another in the proportion of 30 to 22, and the mean mortality deduced from that biennial period would be 26 per thousand per annum.[31]I am, of course, unable to tell youwith certainty whether that ratio be the true average death-rate of the City; but I incline to believe that an average calculated from a longer period, with less abrupt fluctuations, would give a lower figure as the accurate one.

[31]On account of correctionsalreadyadverted to, this mean death-rate should be reduced, probably to 25.2.

In future years, so long as I may have the honour of reporting to the Commission, I purpose proceeding, step by step, to the construction of a cyclical average from the materials which will constantly be increasing; and I trust that many years may elapse before any approach shall again be made to the high death-rate with which the cycle commenced.

It may be useful, for the sake of comparison, that I should remind your Hon. Court of some of the more important differences which prevail throughout the country, in regard to the local rates of mortality. The extreme rates recorded in the Registrar-General’s last publication, relating to the septennial period 1838-44, give 14 per thousand per annum as the lowest average, and 331⁄2as the highest average, for a population male and female in equal proportion. The low average belongs to a district in Northumberland, numbering 27-28,000 inhabitants; the high average is assigned to Liverpool. For the whole south-east division of England (comprising more than a million and a half of inhabitants) the death-rate is but 19; while in parts of the division it falls very considerably below this average. I have thrown these and some similar comparisons into a tabular form, which may perhaps be interesting to you.[32]

[32]Videpage 84.

Possibly it may occur to you that these comparisons aredevoid of practical application—that it is unreasonable to suppose we can mitigate our London death-rate to the likeness of a selected country mortality—that the circumstances of the two populations are essentially and unalterably dissimilar—that the advantages of the one cannot be given to the other—that the traditional ‘threescore years and ten’ of human life are allotted only to rustic existence—that the right of participating in the higher civilisation of the metropolis, or of trading in its larger market, is not too dearly purchased by the tax of half or a third of one’s fair expectation of life.

On general grounds I should not hesitate to combat this objection, and should feel sure of convincing you of its invalidity. I should argue (as indeed I have already argued here) that the main conditions which constitute the unhealthiness of towns are definite, palpable, removable evils; that dense over-crowding of a population—that intricate ramification of courts and alleys, excluding light and air—that defective drainage—that the products of organic decomposition—that contaminated water and a stinking atmosphere, are distinct causes of disease and death; that each admits of being definitely estimated in its numerical proportion to the total mortality which it contributes to cause; that each is susceptible of abatement or removal, which will at once be followed by diminution of its alleged effects on the health of the population. Likewise, I should argue, that if there indeed exist, attached to a metropolitan residence, some really unavoidable and necessary disadvantages to life (a point which however I am not prepared to concede) there are likewise, as respects the poor, some peculiar advantages to counterbalance those evils; that in urban communities theoperations of charitable relief are largest and least remitting; that the resources of medicine for curing what cannot be prevented are likewise readiest and most effective.

On all these general grounds I should be prepared to maintain that a lowness of mortality which has been attained in any considerable rustic population, may be attained by an urban population, if only the removable evils be removed, if only the practicable good be made practical.

Surely too, above all, I would maintain this possibility in respect of our capital—the treasury as she is of all means for progress in civilisation, the stronghold of all applicable knowledge. Let but the wealth, the science, the energy, and the benevolence of the metropolis deal with removable causes of death as they have dealt with subjects infinitely more difficult, infinitely less promising, and certainly of not greater importance; and few competent persons will doubt that the mortality of London might speedily be reduced to the level of any district-mortality yet recorded by the Registrar-General.

There may be those in your Hon. Court who will hesitate to accept for themselves the firm conviction which I entertain on this subject; or who, at least, will withhold their assent from the line of argument which I have advanced. To them, what I have now to state may be more conclusive than any other consideration: viz., during the year on which I am reporting, there was one sub-district of the City of London Union—one comprising from twelve to thirteen thousand inhabitants, in which (after including a due proportion of deaths which had occurred in the union-workhouse at Mile-end) the mortality stood only at 15 in thethousand; one in which, if those extramural deaths had been excluded, the local death-rate for the year would have been only 13·32.[33]

[33]These figures require some correction for decrease of population in the sub-district referred to: the death-rate, inclusive of workhouse mortality, was nearly 16, and exclusive of that mortality, nearly 14perthousand.—J. S., 1854.

For an illustration of low and enviable death-rates, I need then no longer appeal to Northumberland, or to our south-eastern counties—though, no doubt, their septennial periods of low mortality are valuable corroborations of any inference which could be drawn from our more restricted experience;—but I may point to the last year’s death-rate in the north-west sub-district of the City of London Union as one of rare excellence, and may content myself with wishing that that partial rate might become universal for the City, and might be the permanent expression of its average mortality.

A detailed consideration of our sickness and mortality during the last year suggests to me a few other remarks, which may, I think, be of practical utility to your Hon. Court.

First, as regards the ages at which death occurs; the respective proportions oftimelyanduntimelydeaths may, generally speaking, be inferred from the local death-rates. In general terms, we know a high death-rate indicates that many die before their time—indicates that a proportion of the population, more or less considerable, instead of reaching old age, becomes prematurely blighted and extinguished. In order to illustrate this subject to you more exactly, Iappend a table in which the deaths of the last two years are classified according to the ages at which they occurred. Of 3763 persons whose deaths are recorded in my last Report, 1243 died under the age of five years: of 2752 deaths registered in the present year, 1032 belong to the same early period of life.

The City of London appears peculiarly fatal to infant life. Reference to the Registrar-General’s last septennial record shows that of every 1000 male children under five years of age within the City of London (aggregately) nearly 113 die in each year; and the portion of this rate which is deduced from the East and West London Unions is as high as 119 in the thousand. In the subjoined table,[34]which illustratessome points of comparative mortality, I have endeavoured to show the extreme and disproportionate amount of this pressure on infant life. In referring (for instance, in regard of the City of London Union) to the last three columns of that table, you will observe that the mortality of children at the age stated, during the septennial period, was1⁄2·66of the entire mortality, although their class numerically constituted only1⁄11·09of the entire population; so that they died at more than four times (4·17) the rate which would have fallen to them as simple participators in the average mortality of their district. The actual infant mortality of the past year holds the same proportion to the general mortality as in the Registrar-General’s septennial period, being1⁄2·66of the whole.

[34]Places.General death-rateperthousandper annum.Death-rateperthousandper annumof male children under five years of age.Out of entire living population what proportion is under five years of age?Out of entire mortality what proportion occurs under five years of age?By what multiple is the mortality of children under five years in excess of the average mortality of all ages?City of London Union211011⁄11·091⁄2·664·17E. and W. London Union263⁄41011⁄9·021⁄2·244·02Metropolis25931⁄8·451⁄2·453·45Holborn261151⁄8·981⁄2·204·08St. Giles271221⁄9·851⁄2·244·39St. Martin241201⁄10·641⁄2·424·39Bristol291071⁄8·731⁄2·533·45Liverpool331431⁄7·351⁄1·913·85Lancashire263⁄41021⁄7·191⁄2·023·56Surrey18481⁄7·981⁄3·222·48South-east divn. of England19521⁄7·761⁄3·032·56Glendale-14281⁄10·321⁄3·992·58BellinghamHaltwhistle

[34]

Lest any undue importance should be ascribed to the influence of bad or inappropriate articles of diet in producing this large infant mortality, I may inform you that the rate of death is highest during that very early period of life when the child depends for nourishment on its mother; so that, of a thousand male children in the first year of life there die within the district of the City of London Union 242; within that of the East and West London Unions, 276.

The causes which thus decimate the young population of London are the common conditions of district unhealthiness—the conditions which it lies within the scope of sanitary legislation to amend. But, inasmuch as the few days of these wretched children are passed mainly within doors, so their high mortality constitutes the readiest and least fallacious evidence of the unwholesomeness of the dwellings in which they die: and hence I am acquainted with nocorrecter material for estimating the sanitary condition of a district than is afforded by the death-rate of its infant population.

Secondly, with regard to the allegedparticular causes of death; I have extracted from our general registry, and have grouped in aseparate table, those cases of death from acute disease which seem peculiarly due to physical causes affecting large numbers of persons.

There are deaths by cholera, epidemic diarrhœa, and dysentery, of which during the biennial period we have had nearly 900; by fever, of which we have had 284; by erysipelas and puerperal fever, of which we have had 84; by small-pox, of which we have had 50; and cases of this sort partake of the nature of deaths by violence, not only because they are abrupt and untimely, but because they areavoidable. If in the instances which I have specified it were possible to make inquiry into the antecedent circumstances of the dead, you would find irrefragable evidence that life was lost in each individual instance by the operation of removable causes—by the foolhardy neglect of some familiar precaution, or by the obstinate retention of some notorious ill. The death of a child by small-pox would in most instances call for a verdict of ‘homicide by omission’ against the parent who had neglected daily opportunities of giving it immunity from that disease by the simple process of vaccination; the death of an adult by typhus would commonly justify still stronger condemnation (though with more difficulty of fixing and proportioning the particular responsibility) against those who ignore the duties of property, and who knowingly let, for the occupation of the poor, dwellings unfit even for brute tenants, dwellings absolutelyincompatible with health. In addition to the diseases which I have named, there are others which owe their chief malignity and numerical largeness of fatality, though not their existence, to local and removable causes. The proportionate mortality from scarlatina, measles, and hooping-cough, is greatest when the general death-rate is greatest. Under similar circumstances, too, we find among the infant population a frequency and fatality of other diseases, not commonly accounted specific, which warrant us in considering them to be mainly of endemic and avoidable origin. Such are the hydrocephalus and convulsions, the diarrhœa, bronchitis, and pneumonia of infants; often indeed referred to the irritation of teething, but prevailing in different localities with so marked a proportion to the causes of other endemic disease that we may be sure of their partial and considerable dependence on those local and obviable causes. I dwell on this aspect of the subject, and particularly invite the attention of your Hon. Court to the table[35]which illustrates it, because it is in respect of these diseases that your exertions have already effected valuable improvements for the health of the City, and because the future registry of such cases will attest year by year the further progress of your sanitary reforms. In examining this index of preventable deaths you will notice that those from fever are fewer by 29per cent.in the year just terminated than in the previous twelve months; that those from scarlatina are 75per cent.fewer; those from infantile zymotic disorders nearly 40per cent.fewer; those from erysipelas and puerperal fever 9per cent.fewer. Small-pox,it is true, is doubled; but the prevention of this disease rests, out of your jurisdiction, in the exercise of individual discretion. Under the item of infantile diarrhœa (included in thetenth column) there is likewise an increase of nearly a third;[36]an exception probably dependent on the fact that, during last year, many deaths which might have swelled this column were (on account of the then prevalent influence) catalogued under the head of epidemic diarrhœa or cholera.

[35]Appendix, No. IX.[36]In the column referred to, this is concealed by the marked diminution, during the present year, of other disorders classed with infantile diarrhœa. Their reduction maintains the total of that column (notwithstanding the difference of diarrhœa) considerably less for this year than for last.

[35]Appendix, No. IX.

[36]In the column referred to, this is concealed by the marked diminution, during the present year, of other disorders classed with infantile diarrhœa. Their reduction maintains the total of that column (notwithstanding the difference of diarrhœa) considerably less for this year than for last.

I should be misleading your Hon. Court, and practising a deception which next year’s registry would expose, if I pretended that the striking difference between the two years’ several totals of preventable deaths (a difference which, leaving cholera out of the question, probably amounts to a diminution of 30per cent.on the sum of last year) had resulted wholly, or even chiefly, from sanitary improvement, and could be interpreted as the evidence of permanent physical changes around the dwellings of our poorer population. I guard you against this impression now, because, however satisfactory it might be as a momentary belief, it would lead to subsequent disappointment; and any future rise in the proportion of these deaths would induce the erroneous, but disheartening, supposition that your later sanitary steps had been less successful than the first. In all these matters, and especially in analysing the details of a death-registry, it is requisite (as I have alreadystated) to deal with cycles of many years. Periods of pestilence are habitually followed by periods of diminished mortality: partly because population is diminished, and especially that share of the population which suffers most from obviable causes of disease; partly because the great alarm of death has induced vigilance and precaution, public and private, against the occasions and beginnings of illness. And, beyond both these circumstances, there are others which we cannot analyse or explain, though we have scientific certainty of their operation; circumstances which seem to ensure a comparative quiescence of the ordinary causes of zymotic disease during those periods which next succeed the prevalence of certain fatal epidemics.[37]

[37]For the professional reader I may here throw out a hint—referring to the doctrine of epidemic disease stated in theFifth Annual Report, that this apparent healthiness of districts after certain epidemic invasions probably bears relation to a temporary exhaustion of their zymotic atmosphere under the action of a specific ferment, and is in some respects analogous to that immunity from an infected fever which belongs to an individual who has recently suffered its attack. See alsopage 235.—J. S., 1854.

Nevertheless, that the sanitary condition of the City has undergone considerable improvement within the last two years is a fact which no one can gainsay; and that a considerable share of the mitigation in mortality arises from this improvement cannot reasonably be questioned. If even a third of the mitigation in question, if a reduction of tenper cent.on the preventable mortality of the City, may be inferred from the materials which I lay before you, it is indeed matter for the utmost congratulation; and a continuance of the same reduction year by year, perpetuated(as doubtlessly it may be) by a continuance of the same exertions, would soon raise the City of London above all fear of comparison, on the ground of healthiness, with urban or suburban populations.

Thirdly, I would beg the attention of your Hon. Court to those very importantlocal differencesof death-rate which may be deduced from a study of our death-register. I have already had the pleasure of citing to you the low rate of mortality which has prevailed during the last year in the north-west sub-district of the City of London Union. The rate of death in the north division of the West London Union was nearly double that proportion; and between these extreme terms of disparity there were many intermediate degrees.

Similar inequalities of mortality were observable in last year’s record. In the healthiest sub-district of the City the year’s death-rate was about 22 in the thousand; while in the worst it stood above 41; and for the whole West London Union exceeded 38.[38]

[38]I have here availed myself of the corrections given in thenoteofpage 6.

Mainly and essentially these local differences of mortality depend on the proportion in whichpreventable deathsenter into the total; the differences, however partial, depending on the operation within certain districts, of removable deleterious influences which do not exist in certain other districts.

In classifying for your consideration the deaths which, during the last two years, have depended on epidemic, endemic, and infectious diseases, I have thought it desirableto distribute them according to the municipal divisions of the City. Strongly believing, as I have endeavoured to express, that this class of deaths is for the main part preventable, I have thought it would interest the representatives of the several Wards, and would more directly enlist their sympathies for sanitary progress, if I could enable them at a glance to recognise the ratio in which their respective constituencies contribute to this annual death-roll. I have included in thetable, under eight different heads, all those acute diseases which depend in an important degree on local causation, either for their existence or for their fatality. It will be obvious, even to the unprofessional reader, that local causes are not of equal prevalence in respect of all the diseases there tabulated. Some (as fever and cholera) would not be known at all under perfect sanitary arrangements; others (as scarlatina, measles, and hooping-cough) would be far less malignant in their attacks; others (as those classified in the tenth and twelfth columns) would no doubt exist under the most perfect physical circumstances, but would probably prevail in numbers quite inconsiderable as compared with those actually observed.

On consulting this table[39], it will be observed that inCordwainers’ Ward, during the last year, not a single death occurred from the causes referred to, and in the preceding year of epidemic visitation, only five; that inCornhillWard there have been only two such deaths in each of these years; that inColeman-streetthey have been 66; inQueenhithe, 59; inPortsoken, 143; inAldersgate Within, 30;inAldersgate Without, 179; inCripplegate Within, 80; inCripplegate Without, 299; inBishopsgate Within, 60; inBishopsgate Without, 329; inFarringdon Within, 153; inFarringdon Without, 845.

[39]Page 167.

I am unable to state with accuracy, in these several instances, what proportion subsists between the preventable mortality and the number of living persons, for I have no means of ascertaining precisely the population of the separate Wards; and without this knowledge it is impossible to arrange them in a scale of comparative healthiness. I need hardly remind your Hon. Court that the Wards differ very considerably in their magnitude; so that the largest majority of cases occurring in one Ward (as in Farringdon Without) must not unconditionally be taken to imply that the Ward,in proportion to its population, suffers more deaths than one in which the apparent number is less considerable. In thetableto which these remarks refer, I have endeavoured to give you the means of comparing (at least approximatively) the healthiness of your several departments, by entering against the name of each Ward the number of holdings for which it stands assessed to your rate. This entry, with some trifling modifications specified in the table, may be taken to express the number of houses contained in each Ward of the City: thus it furnishes indirectly the means for estimating the local population.

It will be noticed, that the more glaring inequalities which I have adduced are in some degree due to the epidemic of last year, which did not press uniformly on all parts of the City. It may, however, likewise be observed, that the chief operation of that epidemic was to exaggerate,but not importantly to misrepresent, the features of each locality; that the habitual sanitary proportions of districts to each other were for the most part preserved; that (with a qualification to which I shall presently revert) the Wards numbering fewest deaths last year numbered also fewest this year.

In mylast Report, when the cholera had scarcely subsided, when men’s minds were full of apprehension on the subject, and when it seemed only too possible that, with the recurrence of autumn, we might again suffer from its invasion, I was unwilling to dwell too pointedly on the wonderful pertinacity with which that disease fixes itself on particular localities, and tends to re-appear in them on each new occasion of its rise. Believing that no extemporaneous measures could counteract these local preferences of the epidemic, I refrained from a course which would have produced no good result (unless indeed it had depopulated certain spots of the City), and which might have caused unavailing and hurtful alarm. Now, however, I think it right to tell you that the local predilections of this dreadful disease are so marked and so obstinate, that we may almost certainly predict in what parts of the metropolis it would tend to arise on any renewed visitation. We may anticipate that at any such time its latent power of destruction will kindle again in the districts, the streets, the houses, perhaps even in the very rooms, where it recently prevailed,unless the determining local conditions shall previously have been annulled.

It would be ridiculous if I should pretend to carry you into any medical consideration of this subject, or shouldmake my present Report the vehicle of a professional argument; but I may very briefly acquaint you with such generalisations as will justify you in pursuing a particular course with respect to the haunts of cholera. While doing so, I hope your Hon. Court will believe that I have devoted to this very serious subject the best consideration of which I am capable, and have done my utmost to arrive at conclusions which may be fruitful of practical good.

Cholera visited no localities of which it could be said, that they were generally healthy; but still there seemed to be something peculiar and specific in the kind of local unhealthiness which determined its invasion. On the one hand, it is unquestionably true that many habitual seats of fever were visited by cholera; on the other hand, many of the worst fever-nests in the whole metropolis were unaffected by it; and it struck with extreme severity in a class of houses habitually exempt from fever. See, for instance, how malignantly it prevailed along the line of Farringdon and New Bridge streets, and in Fleet-street and Ludgate hill, where their line intersects that just mentioned; and here, you will observe, not only in those obscure and ill-ventilated courts and by-ways, where fever is the familiar visitant of a hungry and crowded population; but also, and very strikingly, in spacious and airy houses, situate along the main thoroughfare of the City, and inhabited by opulent tradesmen, by members of the various professions, or by officers of assurance-companies. Other infective diseases which habitually desolate the former class of dwellings are almost unknown in the latter. Cholera came as a startling exception.Within the infected district(fulfilling the classicaldescription of pale death) it trod with equal foot the gates of rich and poor.[40]

[40]———Æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernasRegumque turres.I think it very important that this fact should be fully recognised. In London it has often been overlooked, from the accident that our most infectable districts happen to contain an excess of poor population. But even here it is quite easy to note that the disease spreads irrespectively of pauperism or privation; and in other cities, (Paris and Copenhagen, for instance) where the quarters of rich and poor are less apart than in London, cholera has killed its full share of dignitaries and capitalists.—J. S., 1854.

[40]

———Æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernasRegumque turres.

I think it very important that this fact should be fully recognised. In London it has often been overlooked, from the accident that our most infectable districts happen to contain an excess of poor population. But even here it is quite easy to note that the disease spreads irrespectively of pauperism or privation; and in other cities, (Paris and Copenhagen, for instance) where the quarters of rich and poor are less apart than in London, cholera has killed its full share of dignitaries and capitalists.—J. S., 1854.

Personal peculiarities, or vicious habits, or temporary indiscretion, may often have determined its choice of a victim; low nourishment—even temporary emptiness and exhaustion, very manifestly invited its attack; but, speaking generally, I may say that it was a disease prevailing over a certain patch of ground, and (within this limit) tending to strike equally, or nearly equally, in all classes of habitations. Crowdedness of dwellings, defective ventilation, squalor of inhabitants, and many forms of local nuisance, which are omnipotent in giving occasion to fever, and in adding malignity to many disorders of its class, did not by themselves exert so marked and specific a power in determining the onset of cholera.

What then were the conditions determining its local preference? Consideration of its statistics, or inspection of a cholera-map, enables one, with some confidence, to answer—a peculiar condition of soil, of which dampness is one sure and invariable character, and organic decomposition (promoted by dampness) probably another.[41]Its local affinities have much analogy to those of ague, and often appear identical in their range with the sphere of malarious infection. Our entire metropolis, built down to the very margins of a large river—of a river, too, which, at each retreating tide, exposes acres of mud saturated with the reeking sewage of an immense population, is placed generally in circumstances not unfavourable to the development of the disease; and its several parts will be liable to suffer especially, in proportion as they are exposed to these general circumstances, or to special circumstances of their own of a like nature. The lower level of districts on the south side of the river, their attendant failure of natural land-drainage, the consequent soddenness of a soil from which likewise the materials of house refuse were never efficiently removed, accounted sufficiently for the frightful epidemic mortality which prevailed in those quarters of the metropolis.

[41]After three years’ further inquiry I find no reason to modify this general description: but, as regards the local circumstances which determine the specified condition of soil and atmosphere, I have been able to extend my information; and the subject is therefore better treated in myFifth Annual Reportthan in the paragraphs here following above.—J. S., 1854.

If you now look to the disease as it raged within your own jurisdiction, you will observe its fatality in two especial directions. First, in the line I have indicated to you, northward from Blackfriars Bridge, in a band of two or three hundred yards width;there, in the parallelogram which lies along the main road, from Stonecutter-street to Bridewell Hospital, were 76 deaths;there, in the little clump of houses forming the angle of Farringdon-streetand Holborn-hill, were 17 deaths;there, in a square space behind twenty-seven shop fronts in Fleet-street, were 57 deaths;there, in the small parish of St. Ann’s, Blackfriars, were deaths at the rate of 25 to every thousand of its population. This was incomparably the most afflicted portion of your territory. Those who are acquainted with the ancient geography of the City will readily conjecture a reason; they will remember when ‘the course of water running at London under Old-bourne bridge and Fleet bridge, into the Thames, was of such bredth and depth that ten or twelve ships, navies at once with merchandises, were wont to come to the foresaid bridge of Fleet, and some of them unto Old-bourne bridge;’ they will remember how this broad river (like the Thames of our day) was thronged on both sides with population; how (again like the Thames) it was a draining river, probably with wide banks of putrefying mud; how many fruitless attempts were made to cleanse and preserve its channel; but how (in Stow’s day) ‘the brooke, by meanes of continuall incrochments upon the banks, and casting of soylage into the stream, was become worse cloyed than ever it was before.’ Where thatsoylagewas cast, and where, since the days referred to, so many habitations have arisen that no sign of stream remains visible to the wayfarer above ground, its traces still remain below. Throughout at least a large portion of this district, the sub-soil (your Surveyor informs me) consists of black mud, the bed of the ancient river, in which are set the foundations of the modern houses. The river, which centuries ago fulfilled for a large population those vile uses which now pollute the Thames, has gradually yielded its foul banks to the residence of a growing population; andthe sanitary relations of that population are exactly such as might be imitated, if the volume of the Thames were henceforth slowly reduced, and if those banks of mud which are now exposed only at low water, were simultaneously converted into the site of permanent habitations.

The history of the stream at Walbrook is, I believe, not dissimilar; but there is this marked difference between the two cases, that the comparative declivity of the latter district has allowed its soil to acquire a dryness and healthiness which have never been reached on the banks of the Fleet. For, owing to the extreme lowness of level in this district, the tidal influence of the Thames is very inconveniently felt; the cellars of houses are habitually exposed to dampness, even to flooding; and probably the whole porous sub-soil, at least as far north as your jurisdiction extends, is maintained in a sodden and malarious state.

With respect to the second part of the City in which considerable groups of cholera cases were observed, it has a not dissimilar peculiarity. I refer to that northern part of the City which extends (on the other side of London Wall) from Bishopsgate to Aldersgate. The epidemic prevailed there with far less severity than in the Fleet district, but still with a preference which easily shows itself in a cholera-map. At the intersection of Whitecross-street by Beech-lane, in a space that the point of one’s finger would hide in Wyld’s large map, there were 12 deaths: in that small portion of the City which lies north of Barbican and Beech-street there were 40 deaths: in the immediate vicinity of Half-moon-street, Bishopsgate, 60 deaths, of which more than half were in the workhouse. Now, certainly, in all this space (and probably still further in both directions,east and west) without the former gates of the City, there is a marked local character. It is a reclaimed marsh.[42]Throughout this district, in the olden times of the City, there lay (says Stow) ‘a moorish rotten ground, unpassable but for cawswaies purposely made to that intent;’ and one reads how ‘divers dikes were cast, and made to drein the waters of the said Moorefields, with bridges arched over them, whereby the said field was made somewhat more commodious, but yet it stood full of noisome waters;’ till gradually ‘by divers sluces was this fenne or moore made maine and hard ground, which before, being overgrowne with flagges, sedges, and rushes, served to no use;’ while ‘the farther grounds beyond Finsbury Court were so over-heightened with laystalls of dung, that divers windmills were thereon set, the ditches were filled up, and the bridges overwhelmed.’

Back to Index Next