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32
STREATHAM,
including
TOOTING AND BALHAM.
In reviewing the sanitary proceedings of the past year,
(1867) as they relate to this Sub-district, the first point
that offers itself for congratulatory notice is the difference
in the amount of mortality when compared with that of
the preceding year. The annexed table will show that the
deaths from all causes, and amongst all classes, were considerably
fewer during the past year than during 1866.
Another fact, and perhaps one of equal importance, is,
that the decrease referred to is almost entirely confined
to the deaths registered as having resulted from the
Zymotic class of diseases—from those diseases which it is
the especial object of sanitation to deal with, and as far as
it is possible, to lessen the fatality of.
In the table which accompanied my report for 1866,
there will be found recorded as many as 38 deaths registered
as being due to Zymotic maladies, but it is satisfactory
to note that in the present table there appears but 13,
which is 25 less than the number dying of these diseases
in the preceding year.
The total deaths registered within the 52 weeks of 1867
being 156, and the total births .308, it follows that the
excess of the latter over the former (152) will correctly
represent the year's natural increase of population ; but
what the increase by the influx of new residents may have
been in the same period, it is not so easy to determine.
From the building operations incessantly going on in the
Sub-district, there are however good grounds for believing
there is a two-fold greater increase, within a given period,
from immigration than from that derived from the excess
of births over deaths. Under any circumstances the
increase has been such during the past year, and since my
last report was rendered, as to quite justify the assumption
that the death rate does not, nor cannot, greatly exceed, if
it even reaches, 14 per 1000 living at the present time.