With the increased wealth of the population finer buildings had been erected in many districts. London had grown enormously in wealth, and the wealth showed itself in finer public buildings and private houses. The District Board of Westminster, for instance, said in their report for 1885-6:-- "Whether viewed as to its character, its statistics, its topography, or its sanitary condition, the change which Westminster has undergone in thirty years can only be described as a complete transformation." "In the St. Margaret's portion, whole streets of fine houses which were occupied by the nobility and the wealthy for residential purposes are now let out in offices for the transaction of legal, scientific, or mechanical business, while narrow streets, wretched courts, and melancholy homes of squalid poverty and misery have been replaced by 'mansions,' 'flats,' &c.; and on the other hand by huge blocks of artizans' dwellings, comprising upwards of 1,200 homes." The Education Act was indirectly producing some good results as regarded the health of the rising generation. A most marked improvement had come over the mortality of children at school ages. Mortality has lessened-- 5-10 years 30 per cent. 10-15 " 32 " 15-20 " 30 "[172] due to the fact that children had been gathered into the schools from their crowded and insanitary homes, and had thus escaped some of the perils of disease. And the Medical Officer of Health for Lambeth referred to this same subject in his report for 1886:-- "The children of the pauper and mendicant are withdrawn from the atmosphere of vice and intemperance to which their fathers had become acclimatised, and are placed under supervision in the schoolroom...." Some slight improvement there was also as regarded the mortality of children under five years, though in many parishes it was still fearfully high. In Mile-End-Old-Town, for instance, in 1890 the deaths under five years amounted to 51 per cent. of all deaths. In Deptford district in 1890-1 they amounted to 50 per cent. In Bermondsey in 1889 they amounted to 52 per cent. In St. Olave, Southwark, in 1888-9 to 49-1/2 per cent. In St. Mary, Newington, in 1890, very slightly under 50 per cent. Infantile mortality was becoming of greater concern than ever as the birth-rate was showing a decided diminution--that for 1889 being the lowest on record since 1849. Though the tables as to death-rate in many of the parishes were still more or less vitiated by various local circumstances, there was considerable unanimity that the death-rate was falling and the public health better. Some diseases which had previously claimed their victims by thousands, now only claimed them by hundreds. Death from tubercular disease had steadily fallen, and the mean death-rate from phthisis in London showed a very satisfactory decrease between 1861-70 and 1881-90.[173]