London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Islington 1906
Fifty-first annual report on the health and sanitary condition of the Metropolitan Borough of Islington
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98
[1906
Table LX.
| Deaths. | Death Rates. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1896 | l6 | 0.05 per 1,000 inhabitants. | ||
| 1897 | 11 | 0.03 „ „ | ||
| 1898 | 8 | 0.02 „ | ||
| 1899 | 16 | 0.04 ,, ,, | ||
| 1900 | 17 | 0.05 ,, ,, | ||
| 1901 | 15 | 0.04 ,, ,, | ||
| 1902 | 13 | 0.04 ,, ,, | ||
| 1903 | 9 | 0.02 „ ,, | ||
| 1904 | 23 | 0.06 „ „ | ||
| 1905 | 12 | 0.03 „ „ | ||
| Corrected Average | 14 | 0.04 „ „ | ||
Puerperal Diseases- These diseases which are of course peculiar to
women who have recently given birth to children, and include puerperal pyaemia,
septicaemia, sapræmia, septic intoxication, and the indefinite term puerperal
fever, together were credited with 11 deaths. This return is 1 below the
average of the preceding ten years, and is in the proportion 127 per 1,000
registered births as compared with 1.05 in the decennium 1896-1905.
It is sad to think that several of these cases would never have occurred if
only proper precautions had been observed by the mothers themselves with
respect to cleanliness in their surroundings prior to the birth of their children.
Inquiries have shown that it is a habit among women in the lower classes to
put soiled and dirty clothing on their beds and on themselves, at the time of
their confinement, when it is essential that every article brought into contact
with them should be scrupulously clean. It is a heavy punishment when
women have to pay for their ignorance with their lives. They do not know,
and they do not understand, that the cardinal rule at a lying-in is absolute