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61
PUTNEY AND ROEHAMPTON.
In order to arrive at even an approximate estimate of
the death·rate of a locality for any given year, it is first
essential to find the mean of the population of that year
after the manner adopted by the statistical department of
the Registrar·General's Office. The population of this
parish and the adjoining hamlet of Roehampton was
ascertained, in 1874, to have been in the middle of that
year 13,396, but at the same period of the year under
review, the number of inhabitants amounted to 10,891.
The registered deaths for the past year having been 167,
(74 males and 93 females) it follows that the rate of mortality
was 15·7 per 1000 persons living, or 1 death in
64, Considering the past year was one of the most marked
character in respect to the operation of many of those
climatic influences which have a tendency to weaken the
resistance which both old and young are enabled to make
against the inroads of disease, it would not have been
surprising had the rate been found considerably higher than
the above estimate.
The excess of deaths in the past year over the number
registered in the previous one was 11, chiefly due, it would
seem, to the fatality of Diseases of the Heart and of the
Respiratory Organs, the one being in excess of 5, and the
other of 6, over the numbers registered in 1874.
During the year the births numbered 292, (143 males
and 149 females) which is only 2 in excess of the previous
year, and was therefore by no means proportionate to the
increase of population. The excess of births over deaths
was 149 against 135 in the previous year. The birth rate
was 27'3 per 1000, and the rate of natural increase J l·6
per 1000, neither of them, it will be seen, very greatly
differing from the rates estimated in the former report.
Nothing, it is submitted can be, in a rapidly increasing
suburb like Putney, more satisfactory than a death rate of
15·7 per 1000, seeing that the rate of the entire of London
was 23·7 per 1000, and that the average of 21 of the
principal towns and boroughs of the United Kingdom was
25·4 per 1000.
Zymotic Diseases.—The 167 registered deaths in·