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Appendix II. to Annual Report.
Report of the Medical Officer of health.
According to the Annual Summary of the Registrar-
General the births registered in the year 1905 numbered
929,457, and the birth rate was calculated to be 27·22 per
1,000 being .7 below the corresponding proportion for 1904,
which was the lowest on record at that time. The deaths
numbered 519,939, being at the rate of 15·2 per 1,000. This,
like the birth rate, was the lowest as yet recorded and shows a
decrease of 2 per 1,000 on the average for the 10 years
1895-1904. For the County of London the birth rate was
27·l and the death rate 15·6, the figures consequently being a
little below and a little above those which ruled in England
and Wales.
Owing to the varying distribution and increase of
population in a Borough like Camberwell the calculation of the
birth rate and death rate, based as they are on the population
existing within the boundaries at the middle of the year, is a
matter of difficulty. If we adopt the method of the Registrar-
General and base our calculations on the hypothesis that the
population has increased in the same ratio that it did in the
inter-censal years 1896-1901, we shall probably find ourselves
considerably at variance with the figures when they come to
be enumerated in 1911, for I find that in 1900 the population
calculated on the increase in the previous inter-censal periods
was 269,276, while on the assessments it was 262,513. When
the census was taken in 1901 the enumerated population of
the Borough was 259,339, which more nearly approximated to
the figures obtained by the assessment method than by the
other. I have therefore adopted the same procedure as last year,
namely, to assume that the number of persons per assessment
is the same as that existing at the last census in 1901, and to
form an estimate by the multiplication of the number of
assessments in the Borough by this factor. Indeed, so far as
St. George's Registration District is concerned this is the only