Part 15

These are the heads under which it has appeared to me that the most useful additions might be made to your Act of Parliament, in matters within the scope of my official observation. There are some other minor modifications, which I have submitted to your Committee of Health, and which, as they relate merely to detail, it is unnecessary for me to bring before you. All the recommendations which I have made on this subject result from a careful scrutiny of the operation of your present Act, during the two years that I have had the honour of serving you. Each separate paragraph of my enumeration founds itself upon a distinct recollection of occasions, sometimes numerous, wherein, for want of such enactments, nuisances which you were anxious to suppress have eluded your authority, or advantages which you were desirous to realise have stood beyond your attainment.

It was in the nature of things that this should be so; for the period has been one of experiment. When the City Sewers Act became law for a period of two years, every one interested in its success must have felt the advantage of that limited duration, and have rejoiced in the opportunity, thus afforded, of rendering it eventually the most perfect embodiment of sanitary law.

Parts of the Act have abundantly fulfilled your intention. In the all-important particular of house-drainage--in the enforcement of water-supply, so far as circumstances rendered possible--in the effective preservation of exterior cleanliness--in the abatement of innumerable nuisances--in the provision and maintenance of sewerage and paving and lighting throughout the City--the public has seen your Hon. Court exercising very large powers with very unusual success. And this, let me add, during a time of no ordinary difficulty: a time when, day by day, the vast importance of sanitary improvement has been gaining ground among the educated classes of the country, as a deep and settled conviction; a time when the feelings of all classes have been powerfully excited, and when the metropolis especially has been convulsed with alarm, in the anticipation and in the aspect of a pestilence.

In some other respects the Act has been less operative, and for an obvious reason. To legislate for health was new to you. It was only through the gradual investigation of officers, appointed under the Act, that you could become adequately informed of those sanitary requirements on which your ultimate legislation for the City must found itself. Only by their slow experience, only by failure as well as by success, was it possible that correct knowledge could be obtained of the powers really needful for fulfilling your sanitary intentions.

In carefully watching the fluctuations of health amid your population; in investigating the causes which determine them; and in testing, on every occasion, how far these causes are amenable to the control of your Act of Parliament, I have arrived at the conclusions submitted to you in the present and in my previous Report.

* * * * *

To excuse the length at which I have addressed you, I have but another word to say. My apology consists in the assurance, which again I lay before you, that in spite of all your exertions, untimely and preventable death still prevails most largely in the population under your charge. If the deliberate promises of Science be not an empty delusion, it is practicable to reduce human mortality within your jurisdiction to nearly the half of its present prevalence.

It is the sad prerogative of my Profession to have such knowledge of death as cannot lie within your experience. Knowing all that is implied in each one separate instance of its visitation--how much pain and sorrow, often how much bereavement and destitution, we, perhaps better than others, learn to appreciate that vast amount of social misery which has its symbol in the high death-rate of a population. It is from this practical point of view that I have ever estimated the importance of your functions, and have fixed the obligations of my own humbler office. Notwithstanding all that Medicine can achieve, to succour the body as it struggles against actual disease--notwithstanding those resources of drugs and handicraft, by which the physician or surgeon opposes death or mitigates pain in the detailed exercise of his art, all past experience, and every transaction of our daily practice, confirm the popular adage that _prevention is better than cure_. If this be true in any particular case, much more is it true in the largest application. While _Curative Medicine_--ministering step by step to the individual units of a population, can produce only minute and molecular changes in the health of society; Sanitary Law, embodying the principles of _Preventive Medicine_, may ensure to the aggregate masses of the community prolongation of life and diminution of suffering: in the working of some single enactment, it may affect the lives of generations of men, and may moderate in respect of millions the sources of orphanage and poverty.

Surely, it is no common epoch in the history of the metropolis when you are appealing to the Legislature, on behalf of the Corporation, for the grant of additional powers towards the accomplishment of so great a beneficence. To me it has always been an act of the deepest and most anxious responsibility to address you; and it would ill have become me now, in the attempt to discharge so grave a duty, if I had spared any pains or withholden any conviction.

While endeavouring in this, and in my previous Report, faithfully and in detail to depict for you the actual condition of human life within the City, and while seeking to deduce for you, from reason and experience, those sanitary principles which are applicable for its improvement, I have had no trivial or easy task; and you will pardon me, I hope, both if I have incompletely surmounted the difficulties of so large a subject, and if, by the length of my Report, I have made too great claims on your indulgence.

I have the honour to remain,

&c., &c.

Note to Column I.

Speaking generally, this column may be taken to express the number of houses in each Ward. Exception must be made, however, in respect of the four wards marked with asterisks; for in them the real number of houses somewhat exceeds the number of assessments. This discrepancy depends on the fact that, in the specified wards, a court containing several houses is often assessed by composition as a single property. Mr. Daw informs me that in order to correct on this score the numbers which stand opposite the Wards in question, addition should be made as follows:--to Bishopsgate Without, 80--raising its number to 1100; to Cripplegate Without, 150--raising its number to 1112; to Farringdon Without, 100--raising its number to 3633; to Portsoken, 150--raising its number to 1408. This would raise the total number to 16,384, which is about the estimated number of houses in the City. From the results of the last census it appeared that the population of the City was distributed as follows:--within the district of the City of London Union on an average of 7·1 persons to each house; within the district of the East and West London Unions on an average of 8·8 persons to each house.

_Comparative prevalence, in the several Wards of the City, of such Deaths as particularly depend on local circumstances._

+-------+--------------------+--------+---------+---------+---------+ | I. | II. | III. | IV. | V. | VI. | | | | | | | | |Number | WARDS |Total |Separate |Cholera, |Fever, | |of | |for the |Totals of|Dysen- |_&c._ | |Assess-| |biennial|the two |tery, |Year | |ments. | |period, |years |Epidemic |ending | | | |from |ending |Diarrhœa.|Sept. | |_vide_ | |Oct. 1, |respec- |Year | | |Note. | |1848, to|tively |ending | | | | |Sept. |Sept. 29.|Sept. | | | | |28, | | | | | | |1850. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |1849|1850|1849|1850|1849|1850| +-------+--------------------+--------+----+----+----+----+----+----+ | 184|Aldersgate Within | 30 | 15| 15| 1| ...| 1| 1| | 572|Aldersgate Without | 179 | 122| 57| 32| 4| 15| 5| | 809|Aldgate | 102 | 66| 36| 3| 1| 7| 7| | 133|Bassishaw | 7 | 5| 2| 3| ...| ...| 1| | 314|Billingsgate | 33 | 28| 5| 15| ...| 2| ...| | 334|Bishopsgate Within | 60 | 43| 17| 20| ...| 1| 3| | *1020|Bishopsgate Without | 329 | 231| 98| 88| 7| 18| 13| | 251|Bread Street | 22 | 16| 6| 2| ...| 3| ...| | 205|Bridge | 18 | 12| 6| 4| ...| ...| ...| | 536|Broad Street | 42 | 29| 13| 7| ...| 4| 1| | 194|Candlewick | 13 | 12| 1| 7| ...| ...| ...| | 499|Castlebaynard | 103 | 75| 28| 28| ...| 5| 5| | 341|Cheap | 32 | 22| 10| 4| 1| 3| ...| | 626|Coleman Street | 66 | 42| 24| 1| 3| 8| 3| | 294|Cordwainer | 5 | 5| ...| 2| ...| ...| ...| | 158|Cornhill | 4 | 2| 2| ...| ...| ...| ...| | 471|Cripplegate Within | 80 | 50| 30| 8| ...| 4| 1| | *962|Cripplegate Without | 299 | 207| 92| 86| 11| 15| 6| | 232|Dowgate | 25 | 20| 5| 12| ...| ...| ...| | 961|Farringdon Within | 153 | 117| 36| 67| ...| 9| 4| | *3533|Farringdon Without | 845 | 613| 232| 370| 19| 48| 40| | 409|Langbourn | 29 | 12| 17| 3| 1| 1| 2| | 166|Lime Street | 8 | 4| 4| 1| ...| ...| ...| | *1258|Portsoken | 143 | 82| 61| 29| 5| 7| 14| | 343|Queenhithe | 59 | 36| 23| 14| 1| 2| 4| | 611|Tower | 46 | 22| 24| 9| ...| 4| 3| | 253|Vintry | 14 | 11| 3| 5| ...| 2| 1| | 235|Walbrook | 24 | 15| 9| 3| 1| ...| 2| | |City of London Union| 25 | 18| 7| 1| ...| 7| 2| +-------+--------------------+--------+----+----+----+----+----+----+ | 15904|The Deaths from all}| | | | | | | | | 480|causes within same }| 2795 |1932| 863| 825| 54| 166| 118| |-------|period were 6551 }| | | | | | | | | 16384| | | 2795 | 879 | 284 | +-------+--------------------+--------+---------+---------+---------+

+-------+--------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | I. | II. | VII. | VIII. | IX. | X. | | | | | | | | |Number | WARDS |Small |Erysipe- |Scarlet |Diarrhœa,| |of | |Pox, |las, |Fever, |Pneumo- | |Assess-| |_&c._ |Puerp. |Cynanche |nia, & | |ments. | |Year |Fever, |Maligna, |Bronchi- | | | |ending |Pyæmia, |_&c._ |tis of | |_vide_ | |Sept. |_&c._ |Year |Infants. | |Note. | | |Year |ending |Year | | | | |ending |Sept. |ending | | | | |Sept. | |Sept. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |1849|1850|1849|1850|1849|1850|1849|1850| +-------+--------------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+ | 184|Aldersgate Within | ...| ...| ...| 1| 4| 2| 3| 7| | 572|Aldersgate Without | 1| 5| 4| 3| 14| ...| 27| 12| | 809|Aldgate | 2| ...| 2| 2| 5| 2| 18| 9| | 133|Bassishaw | ...| ...| 1| ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| | 314|Billingsgate | ...| ...| 2| ...| 3| ...| 2| 1| | 334|Bishopsgate Within | ...| ...| 1| 1| 2| ...| 3| 5| | *1020|Bishopsgate Without | 4| 5| 3| 5| 10| 3| 41| 19| | 251|Bread Street | ...| ...| 1| 1| ...| ...| 6| 3| | 205|Bridge | ...| ...| ...| 1| 2| 1| 3| 1| | 536|Broad Street | ...| ...| 1| ...| 3| 3| 4| 6| | 194|Candlewick | ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| | 499|Castlebaynard | 1| ...| 1| ...| 4| ...| 6| 11| | 341|Cheap | ...| ...| 2| 1| 2| ...| 5| 3| | 626|Coleman Street | ...| ...| 2| ...| 3| ...| 10| 9| | 294|Cordwainer | ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| | 158|Cornhill | ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| 2| ...| | 471|Cripplegate Within | ...| ...| 2| 2| 3| ...| 12| 8| | *962|Cripplegate Without | 3| 7| 3| 3| 17| ...| 33| 29| | 232|Dowgate | ...| 2| ...| ...| 1| 1| 2| ...| | 961|Farringdon Within | 1| 1| 1| 1| 4| 1| 15| 17| | *3533|Farringdon Without | 2| 10| 13| 12| 34| 10| 56| 72| | 409|Langbourn | 1| ...| ...| 2| 1| 1| 1| 2| | 166|Lime Street | ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| 1| 1| | *1258|Portsoken | ...| 2| 2| 1| 9| 1| 14| 10| | 343|Queenhithe | 2| 1| 1| 1| 7| 2| 5| 4| | 611|Tower | ...| ...| 1| 3| 1| 2| 3| 8| | 253|Vintry | ...| ...| ...| ...| 1| ...| 1| ...| | 235|Walbrook | ...| ...| ...| ...| 2| 2| 4| 3| | |City of London Union| ...| ...| 1| ...| 2| 1| 3| 3| +-------+--------------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+ | 15904|The Deaths from all}| | | | | | | | | | 480|causes within same }| 17| 33| 44| 40| 135| 32| 285| 243| |-------|period were 6551 }| | | | | | | | | | 16384| | 50 | 84 | 167 | 528 | +-------+--------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+

+-------+--------------------+---------+---------+ | I. | II. | XI. | XII. | | | | | | |Number | WARDS |Infantile|Hydro- | |of | |Zymotic |cephalus,| |Assess-| |Dis. |Convul- | |ments. | |Hooping- |sions, | | | |cough, |_&c._ | |_vide_ | |Croup, |Year | |Note. | |Measles, |ending | | | |_&c._ |Sept. | | | |Year | | | | |ending | | | | |Sept. | | | | | | | | | |1849|1850|1849|1850| +-------+--------------------+----+----+----+----+ | 184|Aldersgate Within | 2| 2| 4| 2| | 572|Aldersgate Without | 13| 9| 16| 19| | 809|Aldgate | 9| 5| 20| 10| | 133|Bassishaw | ...| ...| 1| 1| | 314|Billingsgate | 4| ...| ...| 4| | 334|Bishopsgate Within | 6| 5| 5| 3| | *1020|Bishopsgate Without | 32| 15| 35| 31| | 251|Bread Street | ...| ...| 4| 2| | 205|Bridge | 2| 1| 1| 2| | 536|Broad Street | 7| 1| 3| 2| | 194|Candlewick | 2| ...| 3| 1| | 499|Castlebaynard | 10| 5| 20| 7| | 341|Cheap | ...| 2| 5| 3| | 626|Coleman Street | 6| 2| 12| 7| | 294|Cordwainer | ...| ...| 3| ...| | 158|Cornhill | ...| 1| ...| 1| | 471|Cripplegate Within | 7| 7| 14| 12| | *962|Cripplegate Without | 31| 15| 19| 21| | 232|Dowgate | 1| 1| 4| 1| | 961|Farringdon Within | 9| 2| 11| 10| | *3533|Farringdon Without | 33| 31| 57| 38| | 409|Langbourn | 3| 2| 2| 7| | 166|Lime Street | ...| 2| 2| 1| | *1258|Portsoken | 12| 10| 9| 18| | 343|Queenhithe | 4| 4| 1| 6| | 611|Tower | ...| 1| 4| 7| | 253|Vintry | 1| ...| 5| 2| | 235|Walbrook | 1| 1| 5| ...| | |City of London Union| 1| ...| 3| 1| +-------+--------------------+----+----+----+----+ | 15904|The Deaths from all}| | | | | | 480|causes within same }| 196| 124| 264| 219| |-------|period were 6551 }| | | | | | 16384| | 320 | 483 | +-------+--------------------+---------+---------+

Letter by Mr. THOMAS TAYLOR, Lecturer on Chemistry at the Medical School of the Middlesex Hospital, on the Chemical Qualities of certain Waters.

4, Vere-street, Oxford-street, November, 1850.

DEAR SIR,

Having, by your desire, submitted the following samples of water to chemical analysis, I now beg leave to lay before you the result; and also, at the same time, to reply to certain questions which you likewise proposed.

The samples of water taken for examination were derived from the following sources:--

A. Water supplied by the New River Company.

B. Water supplied by the East London Company.

C. Water from a spring in the neighbourhood of Haslemere, Surrey.

D. Water from a well in Bishopsgate-street.

A. This water was taken from an upright pipe in a court-yard of the Guildhall. It was slightly opalescent, inodorous, and tasteless; numerous small particles floated in it, which took a considerable time to subside. The matter deposited was of a rust colour, and consisted of peroxide of iron, with a little sulphate and carbonate of lime, and organic matter. It is to be observed that, as the water from this pipe is seldom used, these impurities collect in the pipe, and are therefore in some measure accidental, although, prior to collecting the water, a considerable quantity had been allowed to run away. The water was allowed to free itself from these impurities by subsidence, before being submitted to analysis.

By evaporation to dryness, an imperial gallon left a solid residue, weighing 17·33 grs., which consisted of--

Carbonate of lime, with a little oxide of iron 11·12 Carbonate of magnesia 0·60 Sulphate of lime 1·56 Chloride of sodium 2·40 Silicic acid 0·37 Organic matter 1·19 ----- 17·24

When heated, this water became turbid; and, by continued boiling for two hours in an apparatus so arranged that the whole of the steam was condensed and returned to the water, 10·95 grs. of the earthy carbonates, coloured by oxide of iron, were deposited.

The relative hardness of this water, as determined by the soap test, distilled water being taken as unity, was 13·3.

* * * * *

B. The second sample of water was taken from a small tap in the house of Mr. Hall, Bishopsgate-street. The tap was attached to the main.

This water was without smell or taste, and free from floating matter. After standing some time, it deposited a very small quantity of oxide of iron. Although clear and transparent, it was not bright.

It contained 19·10 grs. of solid matter in the imperial gallon. The solid matter consisted of--

Carbonate of lime, with a little oxide of iron 14·58 Carbonate of magnesia 0·44 Sulphate of lime 1·54 Chloride of sodium 1·71 Silicic acid 0·32 Organic matter 0·72 ----- 19·31

Like the preceding water it became turbid when heated to the boiling point, and by continued ebullition for two hours, 12·90 grs. of carbonate of lime, coloured by oxide of iron, were precipitated.

Hardness in reference to distilled water as unity = 19.

* * * * *

C. This water was taken by ourselves from a spring-head near Haslemere, Surrey. The spring issued from the foot of a low sand-hill covered with bushes, and was received into a natural basin about four or five feet in diameter, the bottom of which was lined with pebbles and small gravel. From this basin the water flowed into a large shallow pond.

The temperature of the spring at its source was 49° Fahr., that of the air being 56° Fahr.

This water was perfectly clear and brilliant, but not sparkling. It had no appreciable taste, but was peculiarly soft and agreeable. It did not contain carbonic acid in a free state, for when mixed with a solution of chloride of calcium and of ammonia not the slightest turbidity was produced. When boiled it did not lose its transparency, nor produce any deposit, until concentrated to about one-sixth of its volume, when glittering scales of hydrated silicic acid separated.

An imperial gallon, when evaporated to dryness, left a solid residue, which weighed 5·24 grs.

This residue was perfectly white when dried at 300° Fahr.; when heated to low redness, it charred slightly at the edges. The quantity of organic matter was therefore exceedingly small.

Hardness in reference to distilled water as unity = 2·4.

On analysis, an imperial gallon was found to contain--

Carbonate of lime 2·00 Chloride of sodium 1·46 Sulphate of soda 0·407 Silicic acid 1·143 Organic matter 0·23 ----- 5·24

Traces of an alkaline nitrate were also detected.

During the short visit I made with you to Farnham, we examined several other springs near to their sources. In their general characters these waters closely resembled the preceding sample, all of them being remarkably soft, clear, transparent, inodorous, and free from any excess of organic matter, or of oxide of iron.

By your desire two samples were subsequently sent to me; one marked ‘Barford,’ the other ‘Boorley.’

The water marked Barford contained 6·30 grs. of solid matter in the imperial gallon; when evaporated, scales of silicic acid separated from it in the same manner as from the water taken at Haslemere. Neither of these waters contained any trace of carbonic acid. Their relative hardness (distilled being unity) was--Barford 2·4, Boorley 1·5.

* * * * *

D. The fourth sample of water was drawn from the pump near the church in Bishopsgate-street.