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
St Giles (Camden) 1874
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for St. Giles District]
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36
throughout England, for 35 years, is 4.8 per 1,000. This population
includes all classes—the rich and well nourished as well as the
destitute—and is therefore favourably constituted for a low mortality.
Among the lowest and most impoverished class from which the boys
are received into the Refuge, the mortality is far higher. We thus
see how much the physical condition of children may be improved
by the inculcation of regular habits, and how boys who are, many of
them at least, afflicted with congenital disease, half starved and
broken down in strength, may be brought up to a standard of health
even better than the average of the country.
35. I will now append a Table summarising certain facts in
relation, more particularly, to the deaths of children, which will
facilitate comparison with similar facts in other districts.
TABLE No. 6.
Annual Rate or Mortality, Death-rates among Children, and Deaths in Public Institutions.
| Annual Rate of mortality per 1,000 living. | Deaths of Children under one year ; percentage of total Deaths.* | Percentage of Deaths of Children under one year to Births. † | Deaths of Children under five years; percentage of total Deaths. | Total number of Deaths among Parishioners in Public Hospitals outside the District. | Total number of Deaths among Non-Parishioners in Public Institutions within the District. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1874 | 25.68 | 21.20 | 18.63 | 36.73 | 175 | 50 |
| 1873 | 23.9 | 24.59 | 19.5 | 40. | 146 | 18 |
| 1872 | 23.77 | 25.02 | 20.08 | 40.61 | 136 | 25 |
| 1871 | 25.6 | 22.91 | 20.8 | 38.65 | 132 | 9 |
| Average of 10 years 1864-1873. | 27.29 |
36. The foregoing Table comprises a period of four years; and,
on perusing it, it will be seen that whilst our general mortality has
been slowly rising since 1872, and was, last year, nearly exactly
what it was in 1871, yet that our deaths among infants under one
year, and among children under five years, were less in proportion
last year than in any previous year of the series.
37. This difference is owing to two causes. First, to the small
mortality from zymotic diseases in 1874, as shown in the subjoined
Table, the proportion of deaths to 100 deaths having been, in that
year, 159.61 to an average of 180.0 for ten years,—in fact, our
number was never so low as last year; and, secondly, to a considerable
mortality from pulmonary diseases.‡
* The total Deaths exclude Non-Parishioners dying in public Institutions within the District, and
include Parishioners dying in public Hospitals outside the District.
†The Births exclude the Births of Non-Parishioners in the British Lying-in Hospital, and of
Parishioners of the Strand District that occurred in the Workhouse.
‡ In comparing the past year with previous years, the fact that 1874 includes an extra week must be
borne in mind.