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Archiver > CAN-MONTREAL-IRISH > 2005-05 > 1117245263


From: "Mary Villalba" <>
Subject: Re: [Montreal-Irish] Epidemic/L'Acadie
Date: Fri, 27 May 2005 19:54:23 -0600
References: <BAY104-F131DA74FCD50FC289A6E62DB0D0@phx.gbl> <BAY5-DAV10C43217D98645BE1D39F08E0E0@phx.gbl> <42941366.9010009@shaw.ca>


hi, Gloria: just got around to reading the full report....fascinating!!!
Thanks, again, for sending it on to me!!
m
Mary Villalba
AZTEC Communications
303-290-8415 Tele
Distinguished Governor, 2003-2004, Rocky Mountain District Kiwanis International
"A global organization of volunteers, dedicated to changing the world, one child and one community at a time."
----- Original Message -----
From: Gloria Taylor<mailto:>
To: <mailto:>
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 11:55 PM
Subject: Re: [Montreal-Irish] Epidemic/L'Acadie


This website has a pdf document of 23 pages regarding deaths and their
causes in the 1850's and 1860's. A long read, but interesting...try
starting around page 10 if you just want some basics for the 1858 - 1864
period.

http://www.mat.ulaval.ca/pages/genest/msa/carp66.pdf<http://www.mat.ulaval.ca/pages/genest/msa/carp66.pdf>;

The summary of this article is deaths in Montreal and surrounding areas
and the difference in the death rate between heavily populated Montreal
and the more rural areas. As you read on, it is a comparison of
mortality also to the Liverpool area of England where many of the
immigrant families were before coming to Canada. It seems also that in
this document there were hundreds of deaths that were not recorded nor
their burials. There is also a comment as to the high mortality rate
perhaps being a result of Catholics bringing infants out to be baptised
in very bad weather...lots of rather interesting comments regarding
sanitation.and effect on such towns as Griffintown, etc as well.

snip.......
It will be observed that although so large a proportion of the
moribund population were killed of in the cholera year, the suc-
ceeding year, 1855, was still unhealthy. From 1856{1859, the
mortality, though frightfully great, was below the average. The
six years from 1860{1865 march on with steady course, present-
ing a death-rate only equalled, in the worst English cities, during
periods of special pestilence. In 1866, there is a marvellous and
sudden rebound to the death-rate of the least unhealthy year,
1858. During 1864, there was a terribly fatal epidemic of scar-
latina, its virulence being no doubt caused by the accumulations
of xymotic poison, which then attained their maximum. These
fluctuations are brought out most strongly in the column for chil-
dren's deaths: they are much slower in affecting adults. With
them the rise does not begin till 1863 ; it is even somewhat lower
in 1864 ; and there is no change for the better in 1866.

snip.....
It was well said, in the Sanitary Report presented to the im-
perial parliament in 1858, pp. xxvii. that \1. The lives of young
children, as compared with the more hardened and acclimatized
lives of the adult population, furnish a very sensitive test of san-
itary circumstances, so that di®erences in the infantine death-
rates, are, under certain quali¯cations, the best proof of di®erences
of household condition in any number of compared districts. 2.
Those places where infants are most apt to die, are necessarily the
places where survivors are most apt to be sickly ; and where, if
they struggle through a scrofulous childhood to realize an abortive
puberty, they beget a sicklier brood than themselves. A high lo-
cal mortality of children must almost necessarily denote a high
local prevalence of those causes which determine a degeneration
of race." These words are prompted by long experience, built on
facts which cannot be gainsaid. If they are true of all high rates
of infantile mortality, how awful must be their truth in this city
where the rate is the highest yet presented! And if the number
of graves in our cemeteries prove these things to be true on the
average of the whole city, what must be harvest of death if we
subtract the population living on the healthy mountain-side, and
mark the coffins from the houses in Griffentown ! Surely a fear-
ful responsibility rests on the members of the City Council, and
especially on the members of the Health and Road Committees,
as well as on all owners of property and householders in the city.
Has any man a right to draw money from the rents of houses, by
living in which children cannot but be killed? Has the Council
a right to compel owners and tenants to cleanse their premises,
while it leaves the streets, over which it assumes the entire control,
unsewered and even reeking with the surface filth of years?

Instances were recorded by the Sanitary Association, of women who were
compelled last summer to open their windows over the reeking fumes of the
back courts, because they could not bear the still greater stenches of
the street.


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