[84] This information has been mainly derived from two sources:--first, from the weekly Death-Returns of the nine City Registrars, which the Registrar-General most kindly allows me to have transcribed so soon as they arrive at his office;--secondly, from weekly returns which the Medical Officers of the three City Unions have had the great kindness and liberality to supply for my assistance, as to the existence of fever and kindred disorders in the several localities under their charge. I am very far from considering that these arrangements have been perfect. Circumstances beyond my control have prevented me from constructing as complete an organisation as I could wish; and the fact that your Inspectors are very largely employed in other duties, has perhaps occasionally given some hurry and imperfection to their share of the work. Still, such as it is, this system has been the means of considerable advantage; and I am glad to be able to claim for your Hon. Court the distinction of being first in the metropolis to have established an arrangement for the systematic sanitary visitation of the dwellings of the poor. In relation to this subject, I beg to inform your Hon. Court that your Inspectors have discharged, with much zeal, intelligence, and industry, the duties which you authorised me to impose on them. During the last few weeks it has become obvious to your Hon. Court that the duties of this department of your service have grown to such dimensions as to necessitate some increase of your staff; and acting on this opinion, mainly with a view to render more complete your sanitary supervision of the City, you have just appointed two additional Inspectors of Nuisances. In making this appointment, you have determined not to restrict any two or three Inspectors exclusively to the business of house-inspection, but to allot the joint duties, sanitary and surveying, equally among their number: parting the area of the City into six, instead of four, Inspectors’ districts; so that each Inspector shall give a certain proportion of time to the duties which he has to fulfil under your Surveyor’s direction, and another certain proportion to those in which he will be engaged under the direction of your Officer of Health. It is only some experience of this arrangement that can decide whether it will be the most effectual for your purpose; but in the mean time I have studied so to dispose the industry of your increased staff, under the arrangement you have ordered, as to obtain the most systematic and efficient discharge of those duties which you have desired me to superintend. Reckoning that each Inspector, if he fulfilled no other duty, could report on the condition of about fifty houses _per diem_, I presume that henceforth, in each of your five more important districts, from one hundred to one hundred and twenty houses can be visited weekly by the Inspector, without encroaching on the time required for his other duties.