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19
in it, the relative numbers of old and young persons and of males
and females are taken into account. The mortality among the
very young and the very old is, admittedly, much higher than
amongst persons at intermediate ages. It is also higher amongst
males than females. Apart, therefore, from other considerations,
e.g., the sanitary condition, a district with a population containing
large numbers of young children and old people might be expected
to have a higher death rate than one in which the inhabitants
were mainly young adult females. In order to overcome the
difficulty of fairly comparing districts differently situated merely
as to the age and sex of the inhabitants, the method of “correction
for age and sex distribution” in the 76 great towns of England
and Wales was devised by the Registrar - General.
This method the Medical Officer of Health of the Administrative
County of London has adopted, and applied to the Metropolitan
Boroughs. For the purposes of correction, what is known as a “factor
for correction” is calculated for each. When the crude death rate
is multiplied by this figure the corrected death rate is obtained.
The factor for Finsbury is 1.0355, and the corrected death rate,
which allows for the mortality of each sex at different age periods,
is 19.0 per 1000 living, as compared with 18.9 in 1907.
The corrected death rate for each of the past five years is given
in Table D.—