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These returns yield a zymotic death rate of 2.24 per 1,000. The
amount paid to medical practitioners for furnishing notification
certificates was £71 19s. 6d. as against £80 7s. (id. in 1904. The
Local Authority is recouped for this expenditure by the Metropolitan
Asylums Board. The fees paid for Voluntary Notification of
Phthisis amounted to £11 5s. 6d.
DEATHS IN RELATION TO TENEMENTS.
This year we have again classified the deaths in relation to the
number of rooms occupied by the persons who have died. The
causes of death have been divided into (a) all causes, (b) zymotic
disease (including the notifiable diseases, influenza, and zymotic
enteritis), (c) phthisis, and (d) respiratory diseases other than
phthisis. The results appear to show that the smaller the
tenement the higher is the death rate of all causes and of the
diseases named. This is an instructive result when it is considered
that each of the three years tells the same story and that as many as
4,000 deaths are tabulated on a population of approximately 100,000
persons. It is necessary, however, to recognise that the figures are
of relative value only, for it must not be assumed that a man dying
of phthisis in a one-roomed tenement in 1905 has lived all his life
in that tenement. He may only have been living there a few
months or years, his disease having been contracted elsewhere.
But even as a relative return the figures are striking and illustrate
in a marked manner the broad fact of the evil effects of living under
"overcrowded" conditions.