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INFANTILE MORTALITY.
It has, for a long series of years, seemed to be an
opprobrium to Kensington that the rate of infantile
mortality, calculated upon the basis of the number of
deaths under one year of age to 1000 births registered, is
too high, and always above that of London as a whole.
The year to which this report relates was no exception to
the rule, for whilst the deaths under one year in London were
at the rate of 166 per 1,000 births (a rate much in excess
of the decennial average, 153 per 1,000), the corresponding
ratio in Kensington, as a whole, was 172 pur 1,000 births. Hut,
as I showed in my last monthly report for 1895, the excess of
infantile deaths is found in three only of the seven sanitary
inspecting districts, viz. : in the North-West district, division
A; the deaths numbering 50, equal to 174 per 1,000 births (the
birth-rate being 24.6 per 1,000 of the population, compared
with 210 per 1,000 in the parish, as a whole); in the North
district, 185 deaths, equal to 183 per 1,000 births (the
birth-rate being 329 per 1,000); and in the North-West
District division B, 167 deaths, equal to 286 per 1,000 births
(the birth-rate being 36'7 per 1,000). In the remaining four
districts the ratio of deaths under one year to registered births,
was much lower than in London, as a whole, viz.: in the Central
district, 40 deaths, equal to 134 per 1,000 births (the birth-rate
being 14'7 per 1,000) ; in the South-West district, 72 deaths,
equal to 129 per 1,000 births (the birth-rate being 18"1 per 1000);
in the North-East district, 61 deaths, equal to 127 per 1,000
births (the birth-rate being2rß perl,000); and in the South-East
district, 43 deaths, equal to 117 per 1,000 births (the birth-rate
being 11*4 per 1,000). The deaths under one year, which in
1895 were 624, had been in the preceding three years 587,
625, and 636, respectively. Of these, 102 (or 16 3 per cent.) were
of illegitimate children; the ratio of deathsof illegitimatechildren
to births registered as illegitimate (180), being 566 per 1,000.
Of the 624 deaths, 171 occurred within one month after birth,