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6
1>eaths of
infants per
1,000 births.
I »eaths and
death rates
of infants
in London
boroughs.
Annual Report of the London Count// Council, 1914.
constitution of tlie child-bearing section of the married female population, the decline in the birthrate
is still conspicuously manifested. This is true, but obviously in correcting the crude general birthrate
by making allowance for the age constitution of the section of the population formed by its
potential mothers, only a very partial and incomplete correction is being made. It has been pointed
out, for example, that the age constitution of the potential fathers needs also to be considered, and, if
allowance be made for this, the corrections are still only quantitative and not qualitative. Some of the
qualitative corrections must be regarded, however, as very important, a particularly noteworthy one
being that rendered significant bv reason of the migratory character and the increased urbanisation
of the population during the last fifty years. For instance, in the case of London, the young women
of to-day cannot be fairly compared with the young women of the London of fifty years ago ; and
they differ very widely in respect of the extent to which they may be expected to contribute to the
London birth rate. An obvious difference in this respect arises owing to the fact that the large unmarried
domestic servant class consists of women, who in very many instances, when they marry leave
London ; there is, moreover, a distinct selective influence exercised, under modern conditions of London
life, which materially affects the constitution, as regards social status, of the young married women
transferred from the country to London. Influences such as these have quite unobtrusively transformed
the London mothers of a later generation away from any close resemblance to those of an immediately
preceding or of a yet earlier generation. The early Victorian married women of childbearing
age cannot, therefore, legitimately be compared with the married women of like ages to-day,
and failure to recognise this quite obvious fact is apt to cause much misunderstanding.
Similar considerations to those just mentioned exercise influence, too, in connection with the
observed decline of the death rate, but this subject has already been alluded to on page 2, and has
been discussed at some length, more particularly in connection with the phthisis death rite, in the
annual report of last year.
Injant Mortality.
The deaths of children under one year of age in the Administrative County of London during
1914 (52 weeks) numbered 11,395, being in the proportion of 104 per 1,000 births. The proportion in
successive periods is given in table I., page 40.
The accompanying diagram (D) shows the infant mortality in each year since 1857 in relation
to the mean infant mortality of the period 1858-1914, and also the infant mortality in each year after
exclusion of the deaths from premature birth, which cause of death Would in all probability be
affected in greater degree than the deaths under any other heading by the more complete registration
of recent years.

It will be seen from the foregoing table that in the period 1909 13, and in the year 1914, Shoreditch
(147 and 141 respectively) had the highest infant death-rates, while the lowest death-rate in 190913
was that of Hampstead (70) and in 1914 that of Chelsea (67). The deaths in London under one
year of age per 1,000 births, during each of the four quarters of the year were as follows First quarter,
97 ; second quarter, 80 ; third quarter, 129 ; fourth quarter, 111.
The reports of Medical Officers of Health of the several sanitary districts of the Administrative
County for the year 1914 contain tables prepared in accordance with the instructions of the
Local Government Board giving the number of deaths, from all causes and certain specified causes, of
infants at different age-periods in the first year of life. From the information thus supplied,
the following table has been compiled, showing the figures for London as a whole for the 52 weeks of
1914. It will be seen that the total deaths here shown differ slightly from the total in the preceding
table derived from the annual summary of the Registrar-General.