The Sun. — 1864-08-16 (London, England)

THE DEATH RATE AND THE MAIN DRAINAGE.— At the present time, and during the next four or five years, the statistics of mortality in the metropolis will have a peculiar interest and value. At a first glance at the returns of the Registrar-General, or those of Dr Letheby for the City, it would seem that the interest which ordinarily attaches to such documents could scarcely be enhanced by anything less than either a plague on one hand, or a coraplate cessation of the occurrence of death on the other. But it happens that we are now in a transition state as respects the public health. The vast undertakings of the Board of Works are fast approaching completion; the sewage is being diverted from old to new channels ; the breadths of mud laid bare at every ebb tide on the banks of the Thames will probably be less offensive and less injurious ; and we are all looking forward hopefully to the time when the river, which has made the City, shall no longer be poisoned by it in return for its good deeds. There is just one unfortunate circumstance connected with the main, drainage works, and that is, that the means adopted for the purification of the river consists only in removing the polluting agents to a greater distance than formerly from the abodes of the citizens; the river is not relieved entirely, but the pollution is to take place where there is a vast volume of water, and comparatively few residents The poison will thus be diluted, and the point of its first mixture with the water removed to a distance ; but it can never be held that this method is so likely to be effectual as the traneferance of the sewage to some quite different channels, as, for instance, the burnt-up meadows and barren arable lands, where nature's chemistry would convert the present sources of pestilence into sources of health and happiness, and make wholesome food on land of that which is the detroyer of food in the waters. ror a time—say for the first seven years—the main drainage will be on trial, and we shall expect to see in the returns of registrars some evidence of the good accompliehed, though, in principle, the drainage system is open to so many objections. We do not know how many agencies exist for the engendering and diffusing of morbid toiluences in a place like London, which is neither a town nor a city, but an aggregation of towns enclosing a city, and the whole comprising so immense a population, that no rule cf health found safe elsewhere can be said to apply of necessity to such a case as this. We have need to be thankful, however, ft .r what little we do know of the Soli lifetot Ina it int 114 the midst of groat chid,. Yreva that laws ft Q ‘) effect 04 life of the circumstances little) we may safely oonclude that tauel, has been:accin. towns; number its de s vLeol ineddont a nedo ei nl u dael plfated already to lengthen the term ()Wife and reduee: the l we tttd cotii o the 1 tr mg ruecaht feEeitins to be done yet, and that every delay in the accomplishment must be paid for in so much aotual disease and so many actual deaths; for though death is inevitable, and mast come upon all men, nevertheless the death-rate is an exact measure of the value of our hygienic resources, as well as of the ektetit to Which destructive agencies are rtnaitied to prevail,--City Press, On Thweclay night last a murder was committed in a house in the Avenue Lanaotte-piquet, on the person of a young woman of loofa) character named Eugenie Elie, aged 2d. A dragoon who called at her lodgings on Friday morning found her lying dead on the floor of her bedroom, with a calico night jacket twisted into a cord drawn so tightly round her neck as to have forced a great quantity of blood from her nostrils. As the unfortunate woman's money and jewellery were found safe in her drawers, rubbery could hardly have been the motive for the crime, unless, indeed, the murderer had become alarmed, and had not time to search for plunder. An investigation has been ordered by the police authorities.