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of 54 over the previous year. The birth rate was equal to 18.1. The
birth rate for the Metropolis was 29.5 per 1000 population, which is
stated by the Registrar-General to be the lowest on record.
The natural increment of our population by excess of births over
deaths was 599.
Deaths.—The deaths registered in the year 1898 numbered 1,377.
Of this total 460 were deaths within the district of non-parishioners
who died in the various hospitals and institutions. The number of
parishioners who died in Hampstead was 836, and to these we must add
the deaths of 81 parishioners who died in institutions outside our parish,
making a grand total of 917.
The annual death rate will be equal to a ratio of 11.4, being
slightly lower than that for the preceding year, which was equivalent
to 11.6.
The death rate for London corresponds to a rate of 18.7 per 1000 of
the population, the average death rate in the previous ten years having
been 19.7.
Corrected Mortality of London Sanitary Areas.—Writing on this
subject, the Registrar-General states that the rates of mortality in the
Sanitary areas of the Metropolis, when calculated on the deaths locally
registered, convey an erroneous idea of the relative healthiness of these
areas. The presence of hospitals and other large public institutions in
certain parts of London unduly raises the recorded death rates of the areas
in which they are situated, whilst the mortality of other areas, from which
the patients migrate to these institutions, is correspondingly lowered.
Until the deaths occurring in public institutions have been distributed
to the sanitary areas from which the patients originally came, no reliable
rates of mortality for these areas can be calculated. Thus the death
rate of Hampstead taken on the deaths registered before distribution
would be over 16, and after distribution it falls to 11, whilst in the case of
certain zymotic diseases the matter becomes still more serious, for owing
to the presence of the North-Western Hospital the scarlet fever death
rate, for example, would have appeared as more than thirty times the
true rate if the hospital deaths had not been assigned to the areas to
which they actually belonged.