The Sun.
London, England, 1869-02-06 00:00:00

REGISTRARS' NOTES ON HEALTH.

The returns made by the local registrars of England
continue to indicate the large amount of preventible
disease and mortality. In the returns for the last quarter
of 1868 the registrar of Cawthorne, Yorkshire, reports
deaths from measles, scarlatina, andlfever, and adds :
"Nearly all occurred in one part of my district where
drainage and sanitary improvements are not regarded."
In 1867 the continued epidemic of fever in the little town
of Winterton, in Lincolnshire, caused the Privy council
to instruct Dr. Thorne to inspect the place, and
he reported " the cause of all this terrible sickness
and mortality was evident at a glance—it was
the merest question of filth ; " and now, at the
end of 1868, the registrar has to report : "In
the last two years I have had 400 cases of typhoid fever
under my care alone ; I have never had less than five ; at
the present time I have twenty ; the death-rate in the
parish of Winterton in 1868 (population 1,780) has been
twenty-six in a thousand." The death-rate in the small
town and country parishes of England averaged between
nineteen and twenty in a thousand in 1868 ; so Winterton
added a third to its share. The registrar of Hessle,
Yorkshire, reports epidemic diseases considerably on the
decrease in a portion of his district, where there is an
open sewer, full and stagnant, and he believes the bad sani-
tary state of the place to be the principal cause of such
iisease. Deaths from scarlatina and typhus in two cottages
at Moulton, Lincolnshire, ate reported, with a note that
there was a cesspool against the door of one and against
the window of the other. The registrar of Gloucester, South
Hamlet, mentions that there are newly-built houses there
loadly supplied with water, and almost totally destitute of
drains and sewers. The registrar of Bramham, Yorkshire,
notes as a pretence of improvement the substitution for
old surface drains of underground dra'ns with no means
of flushing them, and in which the sewage is allowed to
decompose, and the collected poisonous gases escape
through open gratings before the houses and through
entrapped sink pipes into the houses. On the other hand,
such returns as the following are equally instructive:—
Howard-street Sub-district, Liverpool.—" Deaths 163,
being 116 less than the average of this quarter of the year;
the decrease is accounted for by decrease of population
and by sanitary improvements, such as regulations to pre-
vent overcrowding and the closing of cellars." Car-
narvon.—" Deaths considerably below the average ; last
year the authorities brought a plentiful supply of pure
water to the town, and also thoroughly drained the town
and removed all nuisances." Of smallpox we have such
reports as these :—Eccleshall, Bierlow, Yorkshire.—
" Eighteen deaths from smallpox of persons of whom
fifteen are known to have been unvaccinated." West Shef-
field.—" Nine persons died of smallpox, seven of whom
are stated to have been unvaccinated." The returns
from Dudley tell of hundreds of empty houses owing to
the bad state of trade and a high rate of mortality thought
to be partly attributable to scarcity of work and want of
sufficient food ; but from Redruth, Cornwall, we learn
shat " there has been considerably less emigration, owing
to the improved prospects in mining and other employ.
ment." The registrar of Braunton, Barnstaple, reports
the death of a woman at Georgeham a hundred years old ;
and the registrar at Balmer, Suffolk, a death " at the
vie (as stated) of 1.00."