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35
Notificatioii of Births.—The voluntary notification of births within 2 days,
which was in force in St. Pancras for 4 months in 1906, was superseded this
year by the compulsory notification of births within 36 hours.
The Notification of Births Act did not come into force in St. Paneras until
March, 1908, and consequently it has not been possible to give a full year's
working of it. Of necessity, it will be some little time before all the parents
become aware of the existence of the Act; but by means of your circular letter
to Doctors, Midwives, Hospitals, &c., and through other measures, a fair proportion
of the births were notified early to the Public Health Department.
In comparing the number of notifications with that of the Registrars'
returns it has to be remembered that the former include Still-births, but that
the latter, unfortunately, do not do so.
By taking all the births that were registered during the last quarter of the
year, and by noting which of these particular births had been notified, it was
found that the percentages of .Notifications to Registrations were as follows:—
West, 67'8 per cent.; South, 65.6 per cent.; East, 79.2 per cent.; North, 60.3
per cent., or the total for the whole Borough worked out at 69.5 per cent.
If this percentage appears lower than that of other boroughs it will probably
be due to the fact of its having been worked out on a slightly different basis;
.
as for the purposes of true comparability between the number of notified and
registered cases Still births were here excluded.