THE HEALTH OF TOWNS IN HAMPSHIRE
(From the Registrar General’s Quarterly Return of Births, Marriages, and Deaths.)
The opponents of the Public Health Act will perhaps be startled to hear that from these unerring tables of Government there has been a large increase of mortality in Portsea Island during the last quarter, and the Registrar General remarks ‟The too crowded state of the lower order of houses tended to propagate disease.” In the Kingston district the births have been 169, deaths 164; an increase of 55 deaths in this district has taken place above the corresponding quarter of last year. The increase has been from diarrhœa and dysentry, of which 29 persons died, and a large number ill. These diseases appeared about the 12th of Aug. Scarlatina and Hooping-cough prevailed in this district; 18 persons died of these diseases. In Landport the births have been 255, deaths 175, ‟the deaths in this district have been over the average,” so that the Board of Health might, if they pleased, have placed the act over the borough. This over-average rate of mortality continued throughout July, and reached its height on the 15th of August; it has since declined in intensity. The workhouse, containing 900 well-fed and well-clothed, although imbecile and impotent persons, sleeping in well-ventilated rooms, and obliged to use personal cleanliness, has been quite healthy, notwithstanding the oppressively hot weather of July, which exercised so baneful an effect or the public health in the filthy and undrained streets of Landport.
There do not appear any distinct returns in these reports for Portsmouth or Portsea towns; why these omissions are, always, we are at a loss to imagine. The returns are however contained in the general summary, and these returns are so comprehensive that any cavilling against them is useless; they are the statistical landmarks of the kingdom, which will always destroy in the oyes of a paternal government any interests or local opposition to the advance of the sanitary measures proposed, come from where they may. In answer to any crude assertions or any popular cry, ‟We do not want and we will not have the Health Act,” the Government asks, ‟What the do the Registrar General’s reports say ?” and here is the answer in a moment which casuistry can alter :—
Death raps at the rich as well as at the poor man’s door, and his visitations, recorded in the General Register, are ever incontrovertable.
In Hampshire generally a very large and unusual proportion of marriages has taken place, showing the increased comforts of the population.
In Portsea Island there has been 259 marriages, 638 births, and 478 deaths. In Gosport, 74 marriages, 134 births, and 92 deaths. In the Isle of Wight, 86 marriages, 356 births, and 209 deaths. In Havant, 12 marriages, 49 births, 29 deaths. Fareham, 21 marriages, 79 births, 44 deaths. Catherington, 6 marriages, 14 births, 13 deaths. Petersfield, 8 marriages, 64 births, 34 deaths. Stockbridge, 11 marriages, 54 births, 44 deaths.
Led by the spirit of enterprise natural to the Saxon race, and driven by oppression from Ireland, as regards the Celtic race, such an amount of emigration has taken place in the last quarter, as must, if continued, materially reduce the population.