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Offices of the Works for the Whitechapel District.
Pubilic Health Department:
No. 15, Great Alie Street,
London, E.,
January 12th, 1897.
On the first page of my Annual Report for the year 1895 it is
stated that "the total population of the Whitechapel District I have
roughly estimated to be 79,000." A few months after that Report was
published it was known that the census declared our population to be
78,676. The calculations, therefore, which appeared in my Report of a
year ago were fairly accurate. The census of last year was the first
quinquennial census, and was instituted not for such statistical purposes as
might prove useful from a sanitarian's point of view, but to enable certain
taxation arrangements to be adequately dealt with. It follows, therefore,
that beyond the crude figures of population nothing is contained in the
Census Returns for 1896 which needs any comment on my part.
I am not now informed officially of the Foreign Immigration which takes
place, but I know as a fact that it still continues to a large extent.
Probably I shall be near the mark for statistical purposes if I average our
population for the whole year 1896 at 79,500.
The marriages during the year within the District amounted to 434.
Last year they were 409, and in the previous year 373.
The total births which were registered in the four Sub-registration
Districts during the 52 weeks amounted to 3,168. In the Whitechapel
Union Infirmary 118 births took place, of which number 18 were born of
women who had not previously resided in the District. Distributing the
remaining births among the Sub-registration Districts to which the mothers
belonged, the correct distribution of births will be as uuder:-
Mile End New Whitechapel Goodman's
Spitalfields. Town. Church. Fields.Total
1071 683 979 424 3157
So that the corrected births amounted to 3,157, viz. :—-1,632 boys, and
1,525 girls. The District birth-rate was equal to 39 7 per 1,000. See
Table A* of the Appendix. 36 boys and 35 girls were born in the 53rd
week of the year.
The Metropolitan birth-rate equalled 30-0 per 1,000.
The total deaths which were registered during the year numbered 2.313,
viz.;—1,394 males, and 919 females. Table B* of the Appendix indicates
the deaths which were registered in the several Sub-registration Districts.
A deduction has now to be made of those deaths to the number of 929,
which occurred among Non-Residents (mostly in the London Hospital);
and then to the remaining sum must be added the deaths of those
Besidents who died in Out-lying Public Institutions and elsewhere outside
the District. These deaths number 219, and the places where the deaths
were registered are tabulated in the Appendix as usual—Table D.† Thus
the corrected number of District deaths for the year was 1,603. A deathrate
for the year of 20.1 per 1,000 is to be recorded, as compared with a
Metropolitan death-rate of 18.5 per 1,000.
* Page 24. † P'age 25.