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TO HIS WORSHIP THE MAYOR, THE ALDERMEN AND COUNCILLORS OF THE
METROPOLITAN BOROUGH OF PADDINGTON.
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
The last Annual Report which I had the honour to submit to you was that for the year
1913. A report for the following year was submitted by the Acting Medical Officer of Health,
Dr. Galway Murray. Strictly speaking the duty lay on me to prepare Reports for each year
after 1914, but when I looked into the matter I found that a most essential statistical detail,
viz., a true estimate of the population for any of those years, was unobtainable. Taking that
fact into consideration in conjunction with the excessive cost of publishing a series of Annual
Reports, and the interference in the work of the Department—already overloaded with
current work—I decided to combine the Reports into two volumes, the first to cover the
period of hostilities, the five years 1914-18, and the second to serve for the two years 1919
and 1920. This decision appeared to me to be justified by the fact that no reliable information
as to the population of the Borough will be available until the autumn of 1921, when
the results of the next Census will be known. In the preparation of this Report I have
included tables of the annual figures of the cases of infectious disease, births and deaths
belonging to the Borough, so that at a later date the annual rates of natality, morbidity and
mortality may be calculated for the period under review and thus preserve the continuity of
the Departmental records.
I much regret that I am unable to submit any information as to the numbers of residents
who took an active part in the war, either by service with H.M. Forces or in works essential
to the success of those Forces, nor of the numbers of those who gave their lives and health
for the safety of their Country and humanity. It is more than doubtful whether any such
information will ever be available.
I he Report now submitted is divided into two sections, viz., Vital Statistics and
Administrative Work. In the former, the first fact which will attract attention is the
decrease in the number of births amounting, for the five years under review, to over 17.0 per
cent. less than the total for 1909-13. The corrected total of deaths for 1914-18 was only 10
per cent. above that for 1909-13, but it has to be remembered that the figure for 1914-18
represents (almost exclusively) deaths among the civilian population, while that for 1909-13
the deaths among the total population. In the introductory letter to the Report for 1913, I
adduced evidence which I thought indicated that the reduction in the population of the
Borough recorded in the most recent Censuses have given place to an increase. If the
suggested increase had persisted during 1914-18, a large number of deaths could have been
recorded during those years (in comparison with the preceding five years) without any
increase in the rate of mortality. As a matter of fact the 1914-18 total was drawn from a
population from which were excluded all adults serving with the Forces, a section of the
population with a low rate of mortality. The mortality rates given in Table I., Appendix,
are, I believe, too high. as I think that the civil population has been underestimated.
The mean of the rates, there given for 1914-18, is some 22 per cent. above the mean
for 1909-13. After carefully considering the available information, I am inclined to the
opinion that the civilian mortality during 1914-18 was approximately 15 per cent, higher
than the total mortality during 1909-13. This view is supported to some extent by the fact
that the mortality during 1914-18, at ages under 5 years—not dependent on any estimate of
the total population--was 16 per cent above that for 1909-13 (See page 26). The general
run of the records show that the mortality tended towards an increase with the prolongation
of hostilities. That fact is, I think, more particularly observable in the mortality at ages
under one year.