170 Professor G. V. Poore [April 24, 



supjDly, lias abundantly used his opportunities, and the happy ground- 

 landlord has sold his land at large prices per square foot. We are 

 shutting out the light and air more and more from our cities, and the 

 crowding in the streets is making locomotion in them difficult. This 

 overcrowding is a serious matter, and I will show you what it means 

 in London by throwing on the screen a table and diagrammatic plan of 

 the sanitary areas of London, with the mortality figures in the years 

 1892 and 1893, as calculated by Mr. Shirley Murphy after due 

 correction for abnormalities of age and sex distribution (see the 

 preceding page). 



This table and plan shows at a glance that the mortality of 

 London as a whole (taken as 1000) is fourteen or fifteen per cent, 

 higher than that of England and Wales, and that, while some of the 

 outlying districts, such as Hampstead, Lewisham, and Phimstead, 

 liavc a mortality below that of England and Wales, the areas near 

 the centre of London are all considerably above it ; and some, 

 such as the Strand, Holborn, St. George's-in-the-East, and White- 

 chaj)el, have a mortality as high as that of the worst manufacturing 

 towns. 



The danger of overcrowding is well shown by the explosive 

 outburst of small-pox in Marylebone in 1894. 



I will throw upon the screen a photograph of part of the Asylums 

 Board Map in which each case of notified small-pox is shown by a 

 black dot (Fig. 4). This map shows that the outbreak was limited 

 to two spots, one in Portland Town and one round Nightingale 

 Street, Edgware Eoad, where the density of population, according to 

 Mr. Charles Booth, is over 300 i)ersons to the acre. 



The other maps show that, whereas the air-borne contagiura, 

 diphtheria, was confined more or less to the crowded districts, en- 

 teric fever, which is a water-borne contagium, was evenly spread 

 over the whole parish. It need hardly be said that the enforcement 

 of vaccination, notification, and isolation, are important in proportion 

 to the density of population. The working of the sanitary laws is a 

 great expense to the ratepayers. I find it stated, for instance, in the 

 report of the Asylums Board, that for the removal of the 260 

 small-pox patients from Marylebone, the ambulances travelled nearly 

 twenty miles for each patient, and collectively 5200 miles, or about 

 the distance from here to Bombay. Overcrowding is not cheap, and 

 I find, by a reference to the report of St. Marylebone, that whereas, 

 in 1871, that parish, of about 1500 acres, and with a diminishing 

 population, could be " run " for about 6601. a day, it now costs about 

 1100/. per day. It is right to add that the parish has no control over 

 a great part of the expenditure, but, nevertheless, 410/. per diem is a 

 fair sum to place upon the shrine of progressive municipalism. 



If infectious disease occurs in our houses we have only to notify, 

 and the parish does the rest. We have j^ut a premium on fever, and 

 the lucky man whose house is visited by a mild scarlatina is rewarded 

 by having his family maintained for six weeks at the public expense 



