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The percentage proportion of deaths in public institutions in the Metropolis in 1905 was 37.5;
viz., 19.3 in workhouses and workhouse infirmaries; 1.5 in Metropolitan Asylums Board Hospitals;
13.6 in other hospitals, and 3.1 in public lunatic and imbecile asylums. The Registrar-General in
his Annual Summary states that "about one in every five deaths occurred in a workhouse or workhouse
infirmary, one in every 68 in a Metropolitan Asylums Board Hospital, one in every 7 in some
other hospital, and one in every 33 in a public lunatic or imbecile asylum." The increase in the
number of deaths in public institutions has been great and continuous for many years.
The Borough Infirmary.— I am indebted to Dr. H. Percy Potter, the medical superintendent,
for the statistics of mortality at this important institution. The deaths, the causes of which
are set out in the table below, were 552, compared with 528, 460, and 471, in the three preceding
years respectively, and were equal to 22 per cent., or more than one-fifth of all the deaths recorded
in the borough. The quarterly numbers were 134, 122, 129, and 167; 301 deaths, therefore,
occurred in the first and fourth or colder quarters, and 251 in the second and third or warmer
quarters of the year. The deaths included 287 of males and 265 of females. The ages at
death were:—Under one year, 72 (compared with 61, 65, and 36, in the three preceding years
respectively); between one and sixty, 270 (compared with 254, 218, and 237, in the three preceding
years), and at sixty and upwards, 210 (compared with 213, 177, and 198, in the three preceding
years).