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accidents associated with parturition (24 in all) were equal to 6.7 per 1,000 live births, against
3.8, 3.0, and 2.5 per 1,000 in the three preceding years respectively. The notifications of puerperal
fever were 9 in number. Bearing in mind the disastrous series of cases of this disease on which I
reported in 1883, when a verdict of manslaughter was returned by a coroner's jury against a
midwife, under circumstances set out in the fourth and sixth reports for that year, I have since
made it my duty to warn nurses, and other women concerned with these painful cases, of the
responsibility they incur by attending parturient women until after a period of three or four weeks,
and disinfection of their persons, clothing, &c. This course was adopted in respect of the cases
notified in 1900 with satisfactory results, there having been no spread of the disease.
Class III.— Dietetic Diseases.
The deaths from the diseases in this Class were 20 : 15 of them in the Town sub-district.
Delirium Tremens was the cause of five deaths, as compared with 4, 6, and 2 in the three preceding
years respectively; Chronic Alcoholism of fourteen deaths, against 11, 18, and 17. It is scarcely
necessary, perhaps, to remark that if all the deaths due, directly or indirectly, to the immoderate
use of intoxicating liquors were correctly certified, alcoholism would occupy a more prominent
position in the bills of mortality; but many deaths due to the misuse of alcohol get certified, and
are necessarily classified, to visceral and degenerative diseases caused or aggravated by drink.
Class IV.— Constitutional Diseases.
This important Class comprises the causes of 514 deaths (19.1 per cent. of total deaths),
including 63 of children under the age of five years; 405 of the deaths were registered in the Town
sub-district, and 109 in Brompton.
Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatism of the Heart caused 12 deaths, 11 of them in the Town
sub-district; Rheumatism 4. Gout was the cause of 5 deaths, all of them in the Town sub-district,
and Rickets of 6, five of them in the Town sub-district.
Cancer, Malignant Disease, was accountable for 152 deaths : 105 in the Town sub-district
and 47 in Brompton. Cancer would appear to be on the increase in the country generally:
possibly, however, some portion of the apparent increase in the number of deaths classified to this
cause, may be due to greater accuracy in diagnosis. The deaths in Kensington in the ten preceding
years were 125, 127, 129, 140, 143, 136, 173, 168, 193, and 169 respectively. Deaths from
malignant disease are usually more numerous, proportionately to population, in the Brompton subdistrict
than in the relatively poorer Town sub-district, cancer being quite as prevalent, probably
even more prevalent, amongst well-to-do people, than in the poorer classes. The parts of the body
most commonly affected are the viscera or internal organs; in women, the uterus and the breast;
the disease, moreover, being for the most part one of later life. Thus, 130 of the deaths took place
at ages above forty-five, and 18 between thirty-five and forty-five years.
Tubercular Diseases were the registered causes of 306 deaths (as compared with 340, 333, and
319 in the three preceding years respectively); viz., 260 in the Town sub-district, and 46 in
Brompton : 57 of the deaths were of children under five years of age. In a few instances Phthisis
was returned as the cause of death in infancy, a period of life at which the tubercular diathesis
commonly manifests itself in other parts of the body than the lungs, e.g., the brain, bowels, &c.
Such deaths have been classified with those ascribed to "Other forms of Tuberculosis," the total
being 50 (of which 17 occurred under five years of age), including 46 registered in the Town subdistrict.
Tabes Mesenterica, popularly known as consumption of the bowels, was the cause of
9 deaths (8 of them in the Town sub-district); 8 of them under five years of age, and 6 under one
year. Tuberculosis of Meninges was the cause of 37 deaths; 8 of them in Brompton, and 29 under
five years of age. Phthisis (Tuberculosis of Lungs) popularly known as decline or consumption, was
the cause of 210 deaths. Of the total deaths, 177 belong to the Town sub-district, and 33 to
Brompton. The deaths from tubercular diseases were, proportionately to population, not nearly so
numerous in Brompton as in the Town sub-district.*
Class V.—Developmental Diseases.
In this Class the total deaths were 210, viz., 185 in the Town sub-district, and 25 in
Brompton. Premature Birth was the assigned cause of 83 deaths, 10 of them in the Brompton
sub-district; Atelectasis of 14, 13 of them in the Town sub-district; and Congenital Malformation
of 15, 11 of them in the Town sub-district. Old Age was the registered cause of 98 deaths, all
but two of them at ages over sixty-five: between sixty-five and seventy-five there were 16 deaths so
classified; between seventy-five and eighty-five 52; and at eighty-five and upwards 28.
* Under the heading " The Treatment of Consumption," further information on the subject of Tuberculosis will be
found at page 31.