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registered. The average number of children in each completed
family has been estimated at between 5½ and 6 but evidence,
necessarily a priori in character, seems to indicate that there
were some 10 pregnancies per married woman and, furthermore,
each year would claim 4 or 5 mothers in childbirth. A similar
number of children under 5 years would die of congenital
syphilis, a disease which was still rife at this time.
In November 1900, when the new Borough Councils
replaced the old Boards of Works, public health standards were
being maintained largely by the application of the following
Acts:—
Metropolis Local Management Act, 1855.
Food and Drugs Acts, 1875/1899.
Local Government Acts, 1888/1894.
Public Health (London) Act, 1891.
In those days little was known of, and scant attention given
to hygiene and, in ordinary homes, ventilated food cupboards
and refrigerators were virtually unknown. Bacteriology and
immunology were young and growing sciences; medicine and
surgery, generally, were at long last throwing off the stagnation
of centuries and a new, vigorous and enlightened attitude
towards community and personal health was taking shape.
Notification of infectious diseases had just been made compulsory
(1899) and the implementation of regulations concerning
the qualifications of midwives was imminent. It was in this
atmosphere that the Council of the Metropolitan Borough of
Greenwich was born and appointed Dr. E. G. Annis as its first
Medical Officer of Health.
Events since 1900
Exemplifying the remarkable improvements obtained in
environmental conditions during the period of the Metropolitan
Boroughs is the rise in the expectation of life at birth from the
figures quoted for 1901, namely, 43 years for males and 45 for
females to the present 68 years and 74 years respectively. Again,
the infant mortality rate, which is now at 19 per 1,000 live
births, is only one seventh of that returned at the beginning
of the century and, the number of children dying during the
first year of their life constitutes only 3% of all recorded deaths
today in contrast to the 24% of 1901.
Such improvements have not been achieved without very
strenuous efforts and dedicated service not only on the part of
the staff but also by those public spirited residents who were