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49
present method of transferring deaths from one district to another.
The method has one advantage—it prevents disputes as to settlement
and length of residence, and, as a rule, easily achieves
finality.
It may, however, react unfairly in the case of those areas which
possess hospitals or other humane institutions, and equally unfairly
in the case of districts like Finsbury which adjoin such areas.
In Finsbury many young children are brought into the borough
and, shortly after, are received into the neighbouring hospitals or
into the poor law infirmary. Later, although they may have
resided in this borough for a very short time, their deaths are
counted in the Finsbury returns. Reference has been made in
previous reports to the frequent occurrence of this matter in cases
of phthisis.
This method, then, of transferring deaths may lead to a considerable
increase in the number of dumped deaths and thereby
burden the district with a fictitiously heavy death rate. This unreal
death rate is of no moment if the correct cause is remembered,
but, unfortunately, the general public have come to regard the
official regional death rates as infallible and incontrovertible
and as defining with the utmost nicety and precision the efficiency
of the public health administration in the impugned district.
The belief that the inhabitants of the district are now generally
poorer than they were years ago is confirmed by the fact that the
percentage of deaths which occur in public institutions is slowly,
and with slight remissions, continuously increasing. The percentage
of the total deaths— 32.8 per cent, of the whole, which occurred
in the wcrkhouse or workhouse infirmary—is a fair criterion of the
poverty which exists among many inhabitants of the district.
Deaths from Exposure and Destitution.—There were
three deaths in the district which were accelerated by destitution
and exposure. Two were widows—one was a male. Two were
from Clerker well, ere from St Luke's. They all died in poor law
institutions, two from pneumonia, one from Bright's disease.