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54
Municipal Milk Depots.
Special Report presented to the Council on July 9th, 1903.
No Sanitary Authority should be satisfied with the sanitary
progress of its district whilst the deaths of infants under one year
of age remain yearly as high as at present. This high infantile
mortality is a disgrace to sanitary administration and preventive
methods, and represents an enormous waste of life that is more or
less preventable. If preventable, why not prevented? Taking
England and Wales, as a whole, it appears that about 180,000
children are born every year to die before they are one year old.
In London, the number may be roughly stated as 20,000. This
is sad reading, but the sadness is intensified when the figures are
read, and considered, pari passu with the birth rates, which are,
unfortunately, slowly but surely declining both throughout England
and Wales, and in London. The Lambeth Borough Council's
immediate concern is with the Borough of Lambeth. For the
two years 1901-2, during which the new Borough has been in
existence, 2,509 children under one year of age have died; whilst
in the old Parish of Lambeth during the 10 years 1891-1900,
14,039 children under one year of age died, and to this number
may be added the 7,921 children (between 1 and 5 years) who
died also.
Taking an average, it may be stated that the uncorrected infantile
mortality rate (i.e., the number of deaths of infants under one
year of age per 1,000 births registered) for Lambeth is 151—that
for the whole of London for the same period being 100. Subdividing
Lambeth into Registration Sub-districts, great variations
are notic'd in the different infantile mortality rates, thus:—
Inner Districts—
Rates per 1000 births
(Uncorrected).
Waterloo Road 141 (corrected 236)
Lambeth Cnurch 1st 237
Lambeth Church 2nd 174 (corrected 185)
Outer Districts—
Kennington 1st, 138
Kennington 2nd 128
• Brixton 137
Norwood 122
LAMBETH 151