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8
BIRTHS AND BIRTH-RATE.
The births registered in the Borough numbered 4,213—
2,122 males and 2,091 females—and were equal to an annual
rate of 26.6 per 1,000 of the estimated population, which is
4.4 per 1,000 below the mean rate of the ten years 1900-1909.
Of the births registered, 15 were of children whose mothers
did not reside in Fulham, while the births of 112 children
whose mothers belonged to Fulham occurred in lying-in
institutions situate in other Boroughs, so that the nett number
of births was 4,310, and the corrected birth-rate 27.2. The
birth-rate of the County of London was 23.6, being the lowest
recorded since civil registration was adopted, and among the
several Metropolitan Boroughs, the rates, after being corrected
by distributing those which occurred away from home
to the Boroughs in which the mothers ordinarily resided,
ranged from 13.3 in the City of London, 14.0 in Hampstead,
and 15.3 in Westminster, to 31.6 in Bermondsey, 31.7 in
Shoreditch, and 32.1 in Bethnal Green.
The continuous decline in the birth-rate in Fulham, which
is shared by all civilised communities, is shown in the chart,
which gives the birth and mortality rates since 1886, when
Fulham was separated from Hammersmith.
Unfortunately this decline is chiefly marked among the
most serviceable of the community, while there seems but
little check to the fertility of the unfit. Thus in Heckfield
Place, which is tenanted by as undesirable a class as exists
in the whole of London, there were 74 births in an enumerated
population of 1,250, representing a birth-rate of 59.2 per
1,000.
The following table gives the number of births and the
birth-rates in the various wards, corrected by the distribution
of the births in Fulham Workhouse, and inclusive of those
occurring in outside Maternity Institutions:—