London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Shoreditch 1915
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Shoreditch]
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33
ARTISANS' DWELLINGS.
The artisans' dwellings in the Borough were under observation during the
year. As a whole their sanitary condition may be reported as satisfactory. As in
previous years, they have been classed as A and B : A including those occupied
by persons in comfortable circumstances, and B those occupied by very poor
persons.
The numbers of tenements, rooms and persons in the artisans' dwellings in the Borough, estimated for 1915, are contained in the subjoined table :—
| Number of blocks. | Number of tenements. | Number of rooms. | Number of persons. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Class A | 44 | 1,935 | 4,775 | 6,600 | ||
| Class B | 15 | 379 | 919 | 1,900 | ||
| Total for the whole | 59 | 2,314 | 5,694 | 8,500 | ||
Taking the figures in the above table, the number of rooms per tenement
averages 2'4 for both classes of dwellings, but the number of persons per room
for the Class A is approximately 1.3, as compared with 2.0 for Class B, which
may be taken as an indication of the more crowded condition of the Class B as
compared with the Class A dwellings.
The births registered during the year, and the birth-rates in the dwellings as a whole, and the two classes into which they have been divided, are shown below :—
| The whole of the Dwellings. | Class A. | Class B. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number. | Rate per 1,000 Inhabitants. | Number, | Rate per 1,000 Inhabitants. | Number. | Rate per 1,000 Inhabitants. |
| 216 | 25.4 | 172 | 26.0 | 44 | 23.1 |
The proportion of deaths attributed to prematurity was at the rate of 4.0 per
1,000 births. For Class A it was 5.8 and nil in the Class B dwellings. For the
Borough the deaths were 19.7 per 1,000 births. The infantile mortality was for the
whole of the dwellings 148 per 1,000 births. For the Class A it was 116 as
compared with 272 for Class B, which is the highest so far recorded for this Class.
(1067)
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