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TO THE
VESTRY OF ST. MARY, ISLINGTON.
Gentlemen,
My Fifteenth Annual Eeport, which. I have now the honour of
submitting to your consideration, is written under the advantage furnished
by a recent census of the population. This census was taken on the night
of Palm Sunday, April 2nd. and the general result, so far as our parish is
concerned, is that within the last ten years, 58,408 persons have been added
to the inhabitants of the district over which you exercise sanitary jurisdiction.
The sum of our population at the census of 1861 was 155,341. On Palm
Sunday, 1871, it amounted to 213,749. The rate of increase has been less
than it was between 1851 and 1861. In that decenniad the increase was at
the rate of 5 per cent. each year, calculated upon the population in 1851 as
ascertained, and of each succeeding year as estimated, that is, calculated in
the way in which we calculate compound interest. Between 1861 and 1871,
the rate of increase similarly calculated, was only 3.243 per cent.* Hence
it follows that, on the assumption that the rate of increase in the last
decenniad was the same as in the previous decenniad—the only assumption
practically available until the population in 1871 was ascertained—our
death-rates as I have calculated and stated them year by year, from 1861
to 1868, have on the whole been below the true death-rates. It is my
business now to make the correction of the error thus arising. Taking into
* The rate of increase was not the same on the two sides of the parish, inasmuch as
while the population of the East Sub-district increased from 79,899, to 115,948, that is to
say, by 36,049 persons, and that of the West only increased from 75,442 to 97,801, that is
to say, by 22,359 persons.