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9
MORTALITY.
General Mortality.—There were 377 deaths registered of parishioners
who were resident in the Parish, and 70 of parishioners who
died in Public Institutions without the Parish, making a total of 447
deaths of parishioners. Of these deaths 238 were of females, and 209
were of males.
The recorded general death-rate is therefore 12.8, as against 13.6
in the preceding year, and 14.0 in 1897. This ordinary death-rate,
however, cannot be taken as a true index of the healthiness of the
Parish, nor can it be justly compared with the rates of other Sanitary
areas, unless some allowance is made for the relative proportions
of males and females at different ages in the districts compared.
Death-rates vary very much in different districts according to
the natures of the populations of these districts; for instance, in a
district containing a large number of very young or very old people,
the rate would be considerably higher than in a district consisting
almost entirely of people of middle age.
It will thus be seen that the death-rates of different districts
cannot be compared with one another or with the country at large,
unless they are reduced to a common standard. There is, therefore
calculated by the Registrar General from the Government Census
returns, a corrective factor for each district in the County of London,
according to the sex and age distribution of the population of that
district; the multiplication of the recorded death-rate of the district
by this factor gives the death-rate which would obtain in that
district if the sex and age distribution of the population of the
district were in the same proportions as it is in the country as a
whole—thus eliminating the accidental differences due to sex and
age and affording a fair means of comparison, and a truer test of the
healthiness of the district. The death-rate so ascertained is known
as the corrected death-rate.
The so-called "factor for correction" for the Parish of Stoke
Newington is 1.07283, and the death-rate corrected for age and sex
distribution is 13.7 per 1,000 per annum.