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18
This would seem to indicate that there is a tendency towards
uniformity in the death rates of the various districts of the
Borough. Thus, while the death rates in the less favoured districts
have steadily decreased, the rate in South-West Battersea
has not shown, at least to anything" like the same extent (during"
1908 the rate actually increased), this progressive decline. If
the decennial averages for the ten years 1898-1907, shown in the
table on page 16, of the three registration sub-districts of the
Borough be compared, it will be seen that the death rates in East
and North-West Battersea exhibit a marked and steady decline,
as compared with the decennial averages ; while in South-West
Battersea no such marked decrease is manifest, the rates in
individual years showing little divergence from the decennial
average. The causes responsible for this satisfactory condition
of affairs are to be found, I think, in the increased attention
devoted by the Council in recent years to those districts most
requiring attention, with the object of levelling up those districts
to a fair uniform standard of sanitation. Thus, while in 1898, for
example, one finds the death rate in East and South-West
Battersea standing at 19.4 and 10.5 respectively, in 1908 these
26.5; death rate, 14.7; infantile mortality, 121.
It is interesting to note the place that the Borough of Battersea
takes during 1908 in the Registrar-General's corrected returns
amongst the twenty-nine Metropolitan Boroughs. There are only
four Boroughs with a less general death rate, sixteen with a less
zymotic death rate, and ten with a less infantile mortality rate.
Taking the ten South Metropolitan Boroughs, Lewisham has the
lowest general death rate, viz., 11.0, and Bermondsey the highest,
18.8, only three of the ten Southern Boroughs having a lower
death rate than Battersea.
London as a whole has a birth rate of 25.2, a corrected death
rate of 13.8, a corrected zymotic (death) rate of 1.35 per 1,000
population, and an infantile mortality (corrected) rate of 113 per
1,000 births. For England and Wales the figures are : Birth rate,
26.5 ; death rate, 14.7 ; infantile mortality, 121.