London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Deptford 1903
Report of the Medical Officer of Health for the year 1903
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Infantile mortality, that is to say, the proportion of deaths of infants under one year to every 1,000 children born was 136; the deaths for the past five years were—
| 184 | 169 | 150 | 138 | 136 |
| 1899 | 1900 | 1901 | 1902 | 1903 |
The chief causes of death were Bronchitis, Pneumonia,
Whooping , Cough, Measles, and diseases of the Digestive
Organs, probably in most cases the result of improper feeding.
The printed instructions upon the feeding and care of infants,
which the Public Health Committee in the year 1901 recommended,
should be distributed throughout the Borough, through
the co-operation of the Registrars of Births, the Officers of the
Deptford Dispensary of the Greenwich Union, District Nurses,
and others and are still being distributed, and will, I trust, be
the means of diminishing the present high death-rate of infants
under one year. The infant mortality for England and Wales
was 132, and for the 76 great towns 144, whilst for the County
of London, as a whole, it was 130.
Table No. 1. SHEWING THE NUMBER OF BIRTHS AND DEATHS IN THE BOROUGH DURING THE YEAR 1903.
| BIRTHS | 3465 |
| DEATHS (including Parishioners in the South-Eastern Hospital, and 449 in the Outlying Institutions) | 1740 |
| Excess of Births over Deaths | 1725 |
ZYMOTIC DISEASES.
The Registrar-General classifies under this heading—Small-
I'ox, Scarlet Fever, Measles, Diphtheria, Whooping-Cough,
"Fever' , (Typhus, Enteric and Continued), Diarrhoea, Plague.