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take an actual example:—In 1913, a case of phthisis was notified
to the Medical Officer, from a poor law institution, in a patient
stated to be residing at an address in Noble Street, and who was
apparently admitted to the institution as from that address.
Enquiry showed that at the time of admission and at the time of
notification the patient did not live in Noble Street, but had
removed therefrom in 1911, and was now living in Gray's Inn
Road, in St. Pancras. In the course of time, when this patient
died, in the absence of this enquiry, this death would have been
wrongly accredited to Finsbury. Notices of many poor law
deaths are received each year in which the sole clue to the patient's
finsbury residence consists of statements such as "of Clerkenwell,''
or "of St. Luke's." Sometimes the alleged Finsbury
address of the deceased is a house that has been demolished 20
or 30 years ago.
In many instances the deceased persons have never lived at the
Finsbury addresses named on the death certificates, but have,
perhaps, used them as accommodation addresses for the receipt
oi letters, or they are the addresses of friends or relatives.
Occasionally, the deceased persons have certainly never been
within the confines of the Borough either during life or death,
and yet they are received on the copies of death certificates sent
by the Registrar-General as if they were Finsbury deaths.
The genesis of these errors is sometimes easily explained. For
example, a patient with phthisis lived in Islington, and was
received into the Islington infirmary. His mother, who was his
nearest friend, meantime moved into Finsbury. The patient was
now transferred to the Holborn Infirmary, where he died. He was
buried from the Islington address, where his brothers still lived.
The Finsbury address on his death certificate was that of his
mother. He had never lived at this Finsbury address.
When these facts were brought to the notice of the RegistrarGeneral,
his death was accredited to Islington.
It is very probable that if poor law institutions and hospitals
kept very careful and accurate records, and were to verify the
addresses and statements of patients on their admission, that the
corrections to the death returns arising from these two sources