Read Friday, 23rd January, 1914. - TARA - Trinity College Dublin

1914.] By S. Shannon Millin, Esq. U?
death-rate. • Sir Charles Cameron accounts for this by the
general poverty of the people and their badly-fed condition,
which is well described in the words of a memorandum
by Mr. Wodswoxth, Secretary to the Local Government
Board, in which he says : —"It is a mistake, however,
to conclude that the high death-rate in towns is attributable
solely to the dwellings of the poor classes. It is due
to other causes also. . It is mainly attributable to the
deteriorated constitutions of the population, a deterioration
.which is the result of inferior .and insufficient food,
poor clothing, and misery generally for generations, resulting
in sickly, feeble, and strumous.conditions of body,
rendering the,poor people obnoxious (to use a medical
word) to disease, and unable successfully to resist its inroads,
and consequences. Sir Charles Cameron says ther€i
is no.t a more under-fed population in the United Kingdom
than the working-classes of Dublin " (p. 7).
That the state of things is still far from satisfactory is
shown by the fact that the death-rate of Dublin is still
high, and is riot decreasing.
" Overcrowding undoubtedly does exist to a very great
extent in Dublin, as may be gathered from the following
figures : 32,000 families out of the total of 54,000 residing
in Dublin inhabit 7,200 houses out of a total of 24,000.
No matter what the size of a room is, there is no doubt but
that it is in the highest degree unhealthy for half-a-dozen
persons to perform all the functions of life in the same
apartment, as is frequently the case in Dublin " (p. 7).
In February, 1900, the Local Government Board of Ireland,
acting under the provision of Section 209 of the
Public Health (Ireland) Act, 1878, appointed a Committee,
consisting of Charles P. Cotton, Esq., the Board's Chief
Engineering Inspector (Chairman), Right Hon. Joseph M.
Meade, Sir John William Moore, R. L. Swan, Esq.,
F.R.C.S.; Dr. Theodore Thompson, Medical Inspector,
L.G.B., England; and Alderman P. Dowd,
" to inquire and report to them as to (1) the cause ot
the high death-rate in Dublin, and (2) the
measures which, in their opinion, should be
* adopted with the view of improving the health of
the city."
The Report (Cd. 243) was presented on 14th May, 1900,
and contains the following: —
" The average density of the population in Dublin, as
ascertained by dividing the-population (according.to the
Census Return of 1891) by the number of statute acres