View report page

40
1906]
DEATHS.
The number of deaths registered in Islington during the year 1906 were
5,050, as compared with a corrected average of 5,910 in the preceding 20 years;
and the resulting death-rate was in the proportion of 14.64 to every 1,000 of
the population, as against a mean rate of 17.13 during the years 1886-1905.
This low rate is very little higher than that which obtained in 1905 when
it was 14.44; and if we examine the mortality statistics from 1838, the
first year of registration to the present time, it appears that on only
two occasions has it been so good, namely in 1903, when it was 14.27, and
in 1905 as already stated. Such a low rate as that now reported is highly
gratifying, and testifies to the healthy condition of Islington, the largest of
the Metropolitan Boroughs.

In 1891 the Public Health, (London), Act was passed, and in the next year
it came into force, since which time sanitary administration in Islington has
become more exacting, a larger staff of Inspectois has been maintained, inspection
has become more stringent, good drainage work has been more rigorously
insisted on, and houses, workshops, yards, stables, slaughter houses, etc., have
been looked after in a manner that had not hitherto been practised. The
results are now seen in reduced death-rates, despite the fact that strong
influences are at work in another direction.
It has been hinted already that a change that has come over the population
of the borough, through the alteration of its sex and age incidence, has
had some effect on its mortality returns, but unfortunately not a favourable
one. In a previous part of this report it has been shown that, if the population
had been cast as regards sex as it was in 1891, there would have been
162,684 males, and 182,303 females in the borough, instead of respectively
163,524 and 181,463, which it is estimated, on the basis of 1901 census, at