The New Rules of Mortality
Aberdeen codifies the role of the health officer in managing public sanitation and mandatory reporting for every birth and death.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The City Council of the City of Aberdeen has passed a new ordinance requiring all physicians and midwives to report every birth and death occurring within their practice to the health officer within twenty-four hours. For deaths, the attending physician or coroner must provide a detailed certificate to the undertaker, covering the name, sex, nativity, occupation, and cause of death. Furthermore, it is now illegal to inter or exhume any body without a permit from the health officer, and funerals for those who died of contagious diseases cannot be held in churches or public buildings. Violators face fines of up to $100 or ninety days in the city jail.
“No person shall deposit in any cemetery or inter in this city nor exhume from a grave any body without first having filed with the health officer a certificate of death.”
This early public health measure reflects the rapid urbanization of the late 19th century, where the city needed to track its population and mitigate contagion. It serves as a reminder of how rudimentary sanitation and record-keeping were established to civilize the frontier environment.
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