In 1916, 914 cases of tuberculosis were reported in Toronto; 37 of these occurred in "The Ward." Charles Hastings, the Medical Officer of Toronto noted a year later that "one naturally first thinks of tuberculosis as the home disease, for in the congested conditions of our slum districts, with a close contact, one finds all the conditions favourable for the development and spread of communicable disease." This photograph of a tuberculosis patient outside of his tarpaper shack underlines the connection between poverty and disease. A more sensitive indicator of poverty, however, was the infant mortality rate. In the Ward in 1916, 38.2 per cent of the deaths that occurred were children under two years. In the rest of the city the percentage of child deaths under two was 28.8 per cent, a difference of nearly 10%.
