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5
EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT
of the
MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH,
Being for the Year 1873.
To the Vestry of the Parish of St. Mary Abbott's, Kensington.
Gentlemen,
The year 1873, healthy upon the whole, was most remarkable
for the comparative abeyance of zymotic diseases of an
infectious character. There were fewer deaths from these diseases
in proportion to population than in any previous year in the
decade. The diminished mortality was not confined to any one of
them but extended to all. The only very fatal disease of the
seven principal members of the group was Diarrhoea, the mortality
from which was above the average. This disease is one of infancy
however, and though the needless loss of infant life is to be
deplored, it is not so great an evil as the premature death of adult
persons from more or less preventable maladies.
The Registration year 1873 comprised fifty-three weeks (371
days), and the deaths registered during that period were 2436. Of
this number 96 took place in the Hospital for Diseases of the
Chest, at Brompton, including three only of parishioners. Deducting
the deaths of strangers in that institution, the annual
death-rate in the parish was 17.6 per 1000 of the population.
(The rate for all London was 22.5 per 1000.) It must be borne in
mind, however, that if a certain number of strangers die within
the limits of the parish, a good many parishioners die out of it—
in the general hospital; and these deaths should be taken into
account in estimating the mortality of the year. It is customary
to add to the known mortality a proportion of all the deaths that
take place in the Hospitals, relative to the population of the
district. Thus, as Kensington comprises about one twenty-seventh
of the population of the Metropolis, a twenty-seventh of the deaths
in Hospitals, (4860), viz., 180, would, in accordance with the rule,
be added to the 2343 deaths of parishioners registered in the