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
Kensington 1877
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Kensington]
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TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL REPORT
OF THE
MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH,
Being for the Year 1877,
To the Vestry of the Parish of St. Mary Abbotts, Kensington.
Gentlemen,
The year 1877 was remarkable for the lowest death-rate
in Kensington of which we have any authentic record. The estimated
population at the middle of the year was 151,000, an increase,
as compared with 1876, of 3,000. The deaths registered as occurring
in the parish were 2,558, and were fewer by 338 than in 1876.
This total includes 125 deaths of non-parishioners that took
place in the Hospital at Brompton for Consumption and Diseases
of the Chest, and are left in the account as a compensation for
the deaths of parishioners that may have taken place at hospitals
or other places outside the parish. In order to ascertain the
correct death-rate, we must add to the deaths registered in the
parish 66 that took place at the Hospitals of the Metropolitan
Asylum District Board, viz, 60 caused by small-pox and six by
"fever," thus raising the gross total to 2,624, a number equivalent
to a death-rate of 17.3 per 1,000 persons living, the rate in the
whole Metropolis having been 21.9 per 1,000.
The Metropolitan rate was 0.4 per 1,000 below the rate in 1876 :
the reduction in the Kensineton rate was 2.2 per 1,000.
The following table shows the relative rates of mortality in all London, and the several great divisions thereof, and in Kensington, in the last five years:
| Death-rate. | 1877. | 1876. | 1875. | 1874. | 1873. |
| Kensington | 17.3 | 19.5 | 19.4 | 19.5 | 18 3 per 1,000. |
| London | 21.9 | 22.3 | 23.7 | 22.5 | 22.5 „ |
| West Districts | 19.1 | 21.0 | 22.1 | 20.9 | 20.5 „ |
| North ,, | 21.8 | 21.4 | 22.3 | 21.8 | 21.2 „ |
| Central ,, | 24.1 | 24.0 | 26.0 | 25.6 | 25.0 „ |
| East ,, | 24.4 | 24.0 | 25.5 | 25.4 | 2.5.2 „ |
| South „ | 21.3 | 22.1 | 24.0 | 21.5 | 22.0 „ |
The most satisfactory features in the mortality statistics for 1877
are the diminished death-rate in childhood, and the low rate from
zymotic diseases. Thus, instead of 1,305 deaths below the age of
five years, and 771 below one year, the numbers in 1876, the
deaths under these ages in 1877 were respectively 1,040 and 648,
while the deaths from the seven principal diseases of the zymotic