History of Sanitation

HISTORY OF SANITATION 93 for the remarkable skill, thoroughness and success with which it was investigated, it will long remain one of the classical instances of the terrible efficiency of polluted water as a vehicle of disease. As a monument of sanitary research, of medical and engineering interest and of penetrating inductive reason- ing, it deserves the most careful study. No apology there- fore need be made for giving of it here a somewhat extended account.* The parish of St. James, London, occupied 164 acres in 1854, and contained 36,406 inhabitants in 1851. It was subdivided into three subdistricts, viz., those of St. James Square, Golden Square and Berwick Street. As will be seen by the map, it was situated near a part of London now well known to travellers, not far from the junction of Regent and Oxford Streets. It was bounded by Mayfair and Hanover Square on the west, by All Souls and Maryl- bone on the north, St. Anne’s and Soho on the east, and Charing Cross and St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields on the east and south. In the cholera epidemics of 1832, 1848, 1849 and 1853, 8t. James’ Parish suffered somewhat, but on the average decid- edly less than London as a whole. In 1854, however, the reverse was the case. The inquiry committee estimated that in this year the fatal attacks in St. James’ Parish were probably not less than 700, and from this estimate com- piled a cholera death rate, during 17 weeks under consid- eration, of 220 per 10,000 living in the parish, which was far above the highest in any other distiict. In the adjoin- ing sub-district of Hanover Square the ratio was 9; and in the Charing Cross district of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields (including a hospital) it was 33. In 1848-1849 the cholera mortality in St. James’ Parish had been only 15 per 10,000 inhabitants. Within the parish itself, the disease in 1854 was very unequally distributed. In the St. James Square district, * The complete original report is entitled “Report on the Cholera Outbreak in the Parish of St. James, Westminster, during the Autumn of 1854. Presented to the Vestry by the Cholera Inquiry Committee, July, 1855. London, J. Churchill,