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mortality among young children.
APPENDIX B.
Mortality of Young Children.
1 he Department now possessing very complete records of the deaths of young children
(0-5 years of age) from 1891-1910, it has been thought that a short preliminary note on the
changes which have taken place during the twenty years in the sex and age mortalities would
be of interest. The records show the numbers of deaths of residents which have occurred
each year in each Ward from certain causes arranged in sex-age groups. The complete
scheme of sex-age diyision will be apparent on reference to Tables II. and Ha (p. 101).
I he numbers of children living at each age on which the mortality rates are based, have
been derived from the births registered within the district, which, during the first ten years
was the old Parish, and during the second ten, the Borough of Paddington. To bridge the
gap in the numbers living at ages 1-5 years during 1901-5, which would otherwise have
occurred by reason of the change in the boundaries of district effected in 1901, the numbers of
children born and surviving their first year of life in (what is now known as) Queen's Park
Ward, have been estimated from the numbers of births in the old Registration Sub-district
" Kensal Town." The recorded mortality rates for the first five years of life are given in
Table I. (p. 100), the rates for ages 1-5 years being necessarily incomplete prior to 1895, as the
tabulation of deaths for single years of life was not commenced until 1891.
The mortality among males during the first year of life, ranged from 197 per 1,000 births
registered (in 1898) to 111 (in 1909), while that for females varied between the limits of
153 (in 1900) and 91 (in 1910). Mortality during the first year of life being subject to great
annual fluctuations, due to some extent to the weather, it is better to consider averages for
groups of years, quiquennial periods being the intervals usually selected for that purpose. By
that method four averages for each sex can be obtained from the data in Table I. (See below.)

There was, therefore, an increase in the average annual mortality among males during
the second period, and a fall of only 1 per 1,000 among females. Since 1901 there has been a
continuous, or nearly continuous, fall in the rates both for males and females. The changes
just mentioned can be better understood if the rate for each sex during 1891-95 be written as
100, and the rates for the later periods be converted into percentages of those for the first,
such percentages being known as " index numbers."

Such index numbers show that during the twenty years under review there has been a
decline in the mortality among males of 24 per cent., and among females of 28 per cent. It
also appears that there has been some slackening off of the rate of decrease in both cases,
the male mortality decreasing by 12 per cent, during the fourth period as compared with