View report page

15
one direction a little farther than this law, and to show that the absence of a class of
diseases from their favourite seat is perfectly compatible with an increase in their
prevalence in neighbourhoods usually more free from them.
Chapter V.—On the Births of 1860; and on the Registration of Births
and Deaths.
The births of St. Giles's in 1860, numbered seventeen hundred and seventy-eight,
giving an excess of 359 over the deaths. As the district is nearly stationary in its
population, it follows that emigration, or rather an excess of emigration over immigration
has taken place in the year to an extent represented by the same figure.
Of the children born 926 were males, 852 females; each of the sub-districts
exhibiting a majority of males. (Appendix VI).
The total of births is above that of either of the two preceding years, but it has
not yet reached the large number of eighteen hundred and fifty, registered in the
year 1857. In the sub-district of Bloomsbury the births are steadily on the rise,
correspondently with the increase in population of this parish. In St. Giles's parish
there have been much more violent changes in the numbers of registered births, as
will be seen from the subjoined enumeration.

The present provisions for the registration of births in England are so
radically defective that it is impossible to draw any reliable conclusion from a
variation in their yearly numbers. An efficient registration law should provide
that every birth should be notified to the Registrar within a given period, and a
penalty should be incurred by the omission of such registration. Such a law is in
force in Scotland. Registration in England, instead of being compulsory, is only
optional. It is, indeed, only permitted during the first six months after birth, for
after that time it is actually prohibited altogether. In England the accident of
more or less ignorant people caring to register their children, and the greater activity
of a Registrar one year than another, are, under present arrangements, the most
potent causes of variation in a birth-rate. In certain investigations arising out
of the census of 1861, the Registrar-General acknowledges the imperfection of
our present system. The fallacies and inconveniences to which it gives rise appear
to be so serious, that we may hope to see a move made in this influential quarter
for procuring a better plan of registration.
It is not only the registration of births, however, that is defective in England.
The laws relating to the Registration of Deaths are in a condition of the utmost
laxity and inefficiency. It is scarcely credible how much the practice of the
community is in advance of legislation in this respect. The utmost that the law
insists on is, that a person burying a dead body shall send notice thereof to the