Mr. Spear's report to the Local Government Board upon the sanitary condition and administration of the Rochester urban sanitary district / [John Spear].

  • Spear, John.
Date:
[1889]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mr. Spear's report to the Local Government Board upon the sanitary condition and administration of the Rochester urban sanitary district / [John Spear]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of his attention to this work. He is an active officer, and in receipt of a salary of 781. per annum. Vital Statistics.—The collection of reliable mortality statistics is a matter of more than common difficulty in Rochester. Hot only are the registration districts not conterminous with sanitary areas, but there are within the city certain small public and charitable institutions receiving inmates both from Rochester and from extra urban localities. The union workhouse for the larger (Rochester) division is, moreover, outside the district; and then, again, there is within it the convict prison at Borstal (which accounts for some 700 of the population), as well as vessels in the port, each and all of which contain individuals amongst whom the death rate, compared with the general population, is naturally low. The Medical Officer of Health usually calcu¬ lates the death rate from all causes, first from the number registered as having occurred in the district, and then from this total number minus all those that, whether belonging to Rochester or not, have occurred in “ public institutions” (as the term is defined by the Registrar-General). It will be seen that this latter plan excludes many deaths amongst persons belonging to Rochester; and that the other, while it includes certain deaths that more properly belong to the Chatham bills of mortality, takes no account of deaths that occur in the workhouse belonging to the largest division of Rochester, no account of cases that may be removed to London hospitals, nor of the pre¬ sence (in the prison and on shipboard) of a considerable “ picked ” population. These considerations have to be borne in mind in studying the Medical Officer of Health’s returns, reproduced in Table 2, appended. From what has already been said it will have been gathered that enteric fever and diphtheria have shown from time to time some prevalence in Rochester. The cases of these diseases, and of scarlatina and small-pox, that have come to the knowledge of the Sanitary Officers in recent years are stated, so far as information allows, in Table 1, appended. JOHN SPEAR.