London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
View report page
Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Islington 1911
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Islington, Metropolitan Borough of]
This page requires JavaScript
41
[1911
Now if the death-rates had remained the same in 1911 as in 1893, or as
in 1901, the deaths as shown in the following Table would have occurred:—
| Ages. | Deaths on the basis of the death-rates for 1893. | Deaths on the basis of the death-rates for 1901. | The actual deaths in 1911. | Saving of lives between 1893 and 1911. | Saving of lives between 1901 and 1911. | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4810 | |||||||
This table shows us that, despite the adverse change in the age distribution, the
diminution in the mortality at the several age perieas of life has resulted in a saving
of 1,935 lives, of which 820, or 42.4 percent., were at the wage-earning period of life,
that is, between 15 and 65, in 1911, as compared with the mortality of 1893, and
with 704, of which 331, or 47'0 per cent., were at the wage earning period of life, as
compared with 1901.
The fact that there has been a steady fall in the mortality at each period
of life, not only since 1893, but since 1901, if the slight increase of 10 among
very old people in 1901 be excepted, is strong testimony to the healthy
conditions of life which have obtained in Islington during the last twenty years.
It represents the triumph of modern sanitation in the first place, and of education
in the second, in a community which is closely crowded together, which lives
largely in tenement houses or houses let in lodgings, and in which the lower
classes, artizans and labourers, axe largely represented. When one compares such
a healthy state of affairs as prevails in Islington with the mortality in other