The Express.
London, England, 1853-10-26 00:00:00

(Tram Watson' Board or Health, Oct. 23.)

• •
From reports transmitted this day to the General
Board of Health front the superintendents of the
metropolitan police, K, L, M, P, 14, T, V, and
Thames divisions, it appears that, between the 17th
and 23rd inst., there have occurred in those districts
27 cases of cholera, of which 13 have proved fatal.
01 the latter 3 had been previously reported as under
treatment. In one instance the patient died in 12
hours after attack. Another case in Hill-street,
Mackie jars road (where the patient died within 24
hours of the attack) the surgeon states to have been
the most virulent case of Asiatic cholera which has
come under his notice this season. " The next-door
neighbour describes the stench from the drain in the
yard between 4 and 5 every evening as insufhlable,"
and states that " when the wird sets in from the
direction of Green-street, the stench from Footman's
hone-boiling premises, Newan and Winkley's horse
slaughtering yards, and from the catgut makers, is
very bad. She has suffered so much from those
abominably disgusting smells that her health is
rapidly sinking under it. Her house is infested with
numbers of filthy black flies which smell very offen-
sive." The soap-boiler's premises opposite (Anderson
and Certhy) are described as filling the houses with
thick, heavy, sickly vapours, the smell of which has
caused her to faiut away. It damps the bed clothes,
and the stench on these occasions is so intolerable
that her husband is frequently obliged to leave the
house. Complaint is also made of tubs of putrified
fat kept iu the yard of 24, King's Bench-walk, and
of the liquor from the bone-boilers in Green-street, of
the knacker's yards, and other like premises ad-
joining.
It was yesterday reported that no fewer than six
cases of cholera and two of choleraic diarrheas had
occurred in one house, 33, Upper Chapman-street, in
St. George's-in-the-East, two of which had proved
fatal. It may be added that almost all the cases
were from the inmates of a single small room, in
I which as many as 12 persons slept. It is satisfactory
I to know that, upon the certificate of Mr. Garrett, the
medical officer of the district, most of the inmates
have been removed from this house.

There has been no fresh cue in New-court, Blue-
gate-fields, where two deaths occurred last week. A
good deal has been done to cleanse and purify the
place. The owners of this property, as well as of
the passage leading to it, ought to be compelled to
tlqg it immediately. There is a considerable amount
of diarrhoea in the district, and it is somewhat on the
increase.

KENSINGTON.-Dr. Milroy, in company with Mr. I
Frost, the medical officer of the district, recently re-
inspscted the " Potteries," in the Notting hill division
of Kensington parish. Special reports were made in
this notorious locality in 1849, to the General Board
of Health, by Mr. Grainger and Dr. Waller Lewis,
and to the Metropolitan Commissioners of Sewers, by
Mr. Lovick. On the re-examination of the district,
within the last few days, Dr. Milroy states that he
can perceive no abatements of its horrible nuisances;
no signs of noticeable improvement since his former
examination of it in August, 1849, with the parochial
medical officers. It is represented as being now
what it was then—one large slough of loathsome
abominations, revolting alike to sight and smell, and
fatally pernicious to health, as was attested by the
high rate of mortality at all times among the inha-
bitants, and by the large number of deaths from
cholera in the epidemic of 1849.
"At the time of my visit last week," says Dr.''
Milroy, " the roads and streets were no better than
long tracks of black putrescent slush with pools of,
foul stagnant water in different parts. It would be
difficult to parallel in any other part of the metro-
polis the state of things in Thomas-street. To cross
from one side to the other without getting ankle
keep in stinking mire, was impossible; nor could I
but feel the reasonableness of the remark which the
people themselves made to me, that the state of the
roads was as bad as that at the pigsties themselves.
Certain it is that even if these nuisances did not exist
it would be scarcely possible for the residents to keep
themselves clean or comfortable while the thoroughfares
remain in their present state, nor have I any hesita-
tion in affirming that this is one of the principal
causes of the insalubrity of the locality. It was re-
cently stated in the public journals that the filthy
piggeries which have for many years rendered this
place so notorious,were removed. The numbers may
not be at the present time quite so large as they
have been occasionally, but they still are as re-
voltingly disgusting as ever, and it would be
difficult to conceive anything more horribly offensive
than the rears of some of the houses whose yards
slope down to the huge pond of filth known as the
Ocean.' In other spots are to be seen heaps of
dung and odors which some of the people are in the
habit of collecting in the immediate vicinity of
their doors for weeks or months at a time
till an opportunity occurs for selling it; while
here and there you are assailed with the peculiarly
nauseating stench produced by the boiling of fat
and other offal, an occupation that is carried on by
some of the pig feeders. The tubs and barrels, too,
containing the filthy wash and other refuse for the
food of thi se animals, serve to increase the pollution
of the atmosphere.

" There are, of course, other sources of impurity
more immediately connected with the houses them-
selves, such as foul privies, neglected ashpits, &c.;
but these are only common to this with too many
other metropolitan localities where the poorer classes
are obliged to reside. There is, however, one
grievance to which the inhabitants are especially
subjected in the Potteries; and that is the miserably
defective supply, amounting to all but the want of
1 water.

„The great bulk of the inhabitants, and the popu-
lation is estimated at upwards of 1,200, are neces-
sitated to go to a well in a field for every drop of
water which they use for drinking and cooking.
Such is the deplorable state in which hundreds of
our labourers and their families are left at the pre-
sent time; and this, too, in one of the West-end
wealthy parishes of the Metropolis. As a few of the
houses have water laid on, I presume that it remains
but with the will of the landlords to have the same
done to all. That the various sanitary evil, enume-
rated above, tell most perniciously upon the health
and lives (not to mention the moral habits) of the
inhabitants in the Potteries, has been demonstrated
over and over again since Dr. Southwood
Smith first specially drew public attention to
the subject in his Report to the Poor-
law Commissioners in 1838. During ten months
in the course of last year, sod when no particular
epidemic disease prevailed, as many as 40 deaths
occurred, a ratio equal to nearly 4 per cent. of the
residents; and of these 40 deaths, no less than four-
fifths occurred at 6 years and under. The natural
situation of the place, although lying rather low, is
anything but insalubrious; as, indeed, may be inferred
from the rows of handsome houses which have of
recent years sprung up in the immediate neighbour-
hood. Nor can the density of the population be
alleged as the cause of the excessive mortality; for
it is obvious that space is prodigally wasted, and
that six times the amount of people might, if lodged
in suitable dwellings, be well accommodated on the
area occupied.”

It will be instructive to compare the mortality
which is here represented to have occurred in the
Potteries with that which took place last year in the
establishments for improving the dwellings of the
industrious classes. The population of the Potteries
is estimated at 1,200 souls; the population in the
various establishments of the Metropolitan Associa-
tion is 1,343. In the Potteries there occurred in 10
months 40 deaths; in the establishment of the Me-
tropolitan Association there occurred in one year
seven deaths. In the Potteries four-fifths of the
tatal deaths were under five years of age ; in the
establishments of the Metropolitan Association the
deaths under 10 years of age were not one-half of the
total deaths.

In the week ending Aug. 6, 1853, the number of
deaths from cholera in the metropolis was 4 ; in the
corresponding week of 1848 the number was 19. In
the week ending Aug. 13, 1853, the deaths were 19 ;
in the corresponding week of 1848 they were 17.
Week ending Aug. 20, 1853, number of deaths, 10;
in 1848, 7. -Week ending Aug. 27, 1853, number of
deaths, 18 ; 1848, 7. A% eek ending Sept. 3, 1853,
number of deaths, 16 ; 1848, 7. V ending Sept.
10, 1853, number of deaths, 7 ; in 1848, 6. Week
ending Sept. :7, 1853, 16 ; in 1848, 7. Week end-
ing Sent. 24, 1833, 29 ; in 1848, 4 Week ending
Oct. 1, 1853, 48 ; in 1848, 13. Week ending Oct. 8,
1853, 66 ; in 1848, 30. Week ending Oct. 15,1833,
45; in 1848, 45. Week ending Oct. 22, 1853, 83;

in 1848, 34. Thus le will be seen that in Ib4B the
number of deaths in the 8. weeks ending Sept. 24 was
74, while in the correspozuling weeks of this year
they were 119; and that in the remaining 4 weeks
the deaths were, in 18481 122; while in 1833 they
were 242. The total number of deaths during the
12 weeks in 1848 was 196 ; in 1833, 301.
DUNDEE, Oct 24.—Cholera, 1 death.
CocKEnstoun, OCT. 22.—Cholera, 4 deaths.
HEMEL HEMPSTEAD, OCT. 24.—Cholera, 1 death.
NEWCASTLE, OCT. 24.—Cholera, 1 death ; diar-
rhcea, 1 death. The total number of deaths from
cholera and diarrhoea in Newcastle during the pre-
sent outbreak has been 1,530. In the same period
(viz., the first 33 days) during the prevalence of
epidemic cholera in 1831-2 the number of deaths
was 294.

LUTON, Ocr. 24.—Cholera, 1 death. This death
occurred in a place previously reported as " filthy,
overcrowded, and unfit for human habitation."
SOUTH SIIIELDS.—A return from the clerk to the
South Shields Union transmitted to the General
Board of Health states that 6 deaths have occurred
therein from cholera since the 16th inst., five being
in South Shields and one iu Whitehaven. These,
with the 54 deaths vreviously reported, make up 60
deaths from cholera in the South Shields Union
during the present visitation.
LtvimPorm.—Dr. Duncan reports to the General
Board of Health, that since his last communication
of the 18th to the 24th, there have occurred in Liver-
pool 10 new cases and 9 deaths. In Bof the new
cases the parties were Germans, 6 of them emigrants.
One was a servant in a German emigrant lodging.
house, and one had been resident nearly three weds
in Liverpool previously to the attack. Two fatal
casts occurred among the residents of the town.
STOCKIIOI.3I.—The last accounts render it probable
that the spidemic is nearly at an end in that city.
The cases are not only becoming fewer in number,
but milder in character, the most certain sign of the
decline of the epidemic. On the 14th instant, being
the 62nd day from the first outbreak of the epidemic,
the returns were, of premonitory diarrhoea, taken ill
during the last 24 hours,l9 ; convalescent, 44 ; passed
into cholera, 1 ; remaining under treatment, 263 ;
of cholera, taken ill during the last 24 hours, 7 ; con-
valescent, 6 ; passt d into collapse, 1 ;remaining under
I treatment, 152 ; dead, 8. From the commencement
I of the epidemic the number of attacks of premonitory
diarrhcea have been 5,819, of which 5,096 recovered
I and 438 passed into cholera. Of cholera, the number
of attacks have been 4,123, of which 1,617 recovered
and 2,634 died.

MORE GRAVEYARDS TO BE CLOSED