London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Lewisham 1963
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Lewisham Borough]
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11
Certain statistics have thus been extracted from the last table and
grouped in this way. They are shown in the following table which also
includes the percentage of each social class for each disease or group of
diseases. The percentages should be compared with those in table 4 for
all deaths, but for certain groups it will be realised that the numbers
are too small for comparison year by year.
Table 5
Grouped deaths in social class
| Code Nos. | Group | Male | Female | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | II | III | IV | V | Total | 1 | II | III | IV | V | Total | |||
| 10-15 | Cancers | No. | 4 | 49 | 148 | 54 | 16 | 271 | 6 | 49 | 122 | 27 | 13 | 217 |
| % | / | 55 | 56 | |||||||||||
| 17-21 | Heart and circulation | No. | 23 | 104 | 375 | 78 | 50 | 630 | 108 | 343 | 108 | 44 | ||
| % | 55 | 8 | ||||||||||||
| 22-25 | Lung, not TB or cancer | No. | 3 | 33 | 128 | 41 | 37 | 242 | 1 | 36 | 86 | 25 | 16 | 164 |
| % | 1 | 1 | 52 | |||||||||||
| 33,34 | Accidents | No. | 1 | 3 | 17 | 4 | 2 | 27 | — | 6 | 14 | 3 | 25 | |
| % | 7 | — | ||||||||||||
| 35 | Suicides | No. | — | 3 | 12 | 1 | 4 | 20 | 2 | 5 | 9 | 1 | 19 | |
| % | — | 60 | 5 | 5 | ||||||||||
Local sickness
The Regional Medical Officer of the Ministry of National Insurance
sends a weekly return indicating the first certificates of sickness
benefit received in the local offices. The areas served by these local
offices are in the main coterminous with postal districts of London
and do not coincide with borough boundaries. Lewisham is served
mainly by two offices, "Lewisham," and "Downham," and a fair representation
of the trend of sickness within the borough can be given
by quoting the combined figures for these two.
Table 6 Morbidity shown in insurance certificates
| Weekly average for period ending | "Lewisham & Downham" | Weekly average for period ending | "Lewisham & Downham" |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 29 | 1368 | August 13 | 455 |
| February 26 | 1652 | September 10 | 491 |
| March 26 | 1051 | October 8 | 649 |
| April 23 | 630 | November 5 | 762 |
| May 21 | 608 | December 3 | 749 |
| June 18 | 497 | December 31 | 703 |
| July 16 | 501 |
Weekly average for the year 1963 765
„ ,, 1962 760