If it were possible to furnish you with statistics derived from a still smaller sub-division of each district, these points would be infinitely more manifest. In some limited localities of the City you would probably find an approximation to the average mortality of suburban districts; while in other spots, if they were isolated for your contemplation, you would see houses, courts, and streets where the habitual proportion of deaths is far beyond the heaviest pestilence-rate known for any metropolitan district aggregately--localities, indeed, where the habitual rate of death is more appalling than any which such averages can enable you to conceive.
These facts are quite unquestionable, and I have felt it my duty to bring them under your notice as pointedly and impressively as I can; feeling assured, as I do, that so soon as you are cognisant of them, every motive of humanity, no less than of economical prudence, must engage you to investigate with me, whether or not there may lie within your reach any adoptable measures for lessening this large expenditure of human life, and for relieving its attendant misery. It is, therefore, with the deepest feeling of responsibility that I proceed to fulfil the main object of my First Annual Report, by tracing these effects to their causes, and by explaining to you, from a year’s observation and experience, what seem to me the chief influences prevailing against life within the City of London.
My remarks for this purpose will fall under the following heads, viz.:--
II. Incomplete and insufficient water-supply;
III. Offensive or injurious trades and occupations;
V. Houses insusceptible of ventilation, and absolutely unfit for habitation;
VI. The personal habits of the lowest classes, and the influence of destitution in increasing their mortality.
In treating of these topics, I shall not pretend to bring before you all the details on which my opinions are founded, or to enumerate under each head those infinite individual instances which require sanitary correction. It is my wish at this time to submit to you only such general considerations as may show you the largeness of the subject, its various ramifications, and its pressing importance; and it is my hope that these considerations may suffice to convince you of the necessity which exists in the City of London for some effective and permanent sanitary organisation.