[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Kensington].

  • Kensington (London, England). Parish. Vestry.
Date:
[1858?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: [Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Kensington]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/34 (page 27)
    REPORT OF THE MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH. TO THE VESTRY OF THE PARISH OF ST. MARY ABBOTT'S, KENSINGTON, IN THE COUNTY OF MIDDLESEX. Gentlemen, But few preliminary remarks are required in presenting to yon my Second Annual Report. The 109th clause of the Metropolis Local Management Act, requires that the reports presented during the year by the Medical Officer of Health, should be printed and circulated with the General Statement relating to the Vestry, and I have received instructions from the Sewers and Sanitary Committee to lay before you an abstract of the mortality of the past year, with an account of the proceedings taken for the removal or abatement of Nuisances, and for the improvement of the Sanitary condition of the Parish generally. I shall pursue this year the plan I adopted in my first Annual Report, of closing the mortality accounts on the 31st December, as this will prevent any inconvenience arising from a want of relation between my own tables and those of the Registrar General. By adopting this plan I am also following the example of other Health Officers. It is a matter for sincere congratulation that we have completed the year without being visited by any serious epidemic, and also that the rate of mortality has been absolutely lower than in any of the four preceding years. The past may therefore well be termed a healthy year, as far as our own Parish is concerned. According to my calculations, based on the known decenial increase of our population, I estimate the total number of persons living in the Parish to be 56.000. Another proof that this estimate is pretty correct may be formed from our rate books, which show that there are 9000 inhabited houses ; and as we know that in our Parish seven persons inhabit each house, as an average, the number above stated is sufficiently accurate for all purposes of comparison. The total number of deaths registered, during the year, was 1197; of this number 114 occurred in the Consumption Hospital, all except 5 were strangers availing themselves of the benefit of the charity; 5 deaths were registered from the Cancer Hospital—all non parishioners. By substracting therefore the large number of 114, the mortility of our parish will be at the rate of 19.3 per 1000 per annum. The rate of mortality in the whole Metropolis, for the same