London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

View report page

Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London

Islington 1919

Sixty-fourth annual report on the health and sanitary condition of the Metropolitan Borough of Islington

This page requires JavaScript

Text

Copy text to clipboard

1919]
10

Table: AGES AT DEATH.The following statement gives the ages at which persons died in the borough, and contrasts them with the returns for the preceding ten years:—

AGES AT DEATH.

The following statement gives the ages at which persons died in the borough, and contrasts them with the returns for the preceding ten years:—

Ages.Number of Deaths, 1919.Mean Deaths (10 years), 1909-18.Increase or decrease on mean.
0-1 year525769- 244
1-5 years239492- 253
5-15 „188173+ 15
15-25 „199186+ 13
25-35 „296284+ 12
35-45 ,,369382- 13
45-55 „499546- 47
55-65 „660642+ 18
65-75 „828762+ 66
75-85 „647571+ 76
85 upwards190162+ 28
4,6404,969— 329

Text

Copy text to clipboard

INFANTILE MORTALITY.
Infant Deaths, 525; Mortality Rate, 83.—There were 525 deaths
among infants under twelve months old during the year, or 244 below the
decennial average (769), and they represented an infant mortality rate of 83
per 1,000 infants born. This rate is 19 per 1,000 births below the mean
annual record of the preceding ten years, and, indeed, it is the lowest infantile
mortality rate ever registered in the Borough. The nearest approach to it
occurred in 1912, when it was 86 per 1,000 births. It is most satisfactory to
note the fact that in the third quarter, when the rate is frequently very
high, it only reached the small figure of 78 per 1,000 births.
Satisfactory though this figure is, yet there is no doubt that with the
greater care of children, the teaching of the Maternity and Child Welfare
Centres or Schools for Mothers, and the general feeling among all classes that
children should be taken greater care of than formerly, the time is fast
approaching when we will not look on a rate of 40 per 1,000 births as anything
unusual but as one that ought not to be exceeded. The conscience of the
nation, for some years past, has become alive to the neglect in the past that
has been exhibited in the care of children, especially those whose ages might
be counted in months rather than years. Indeed, so long ago as 1878, your