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34
MORTALITY OF CHILDHOOD

No system of "infant visiting" can be expected to combat infantile mortality among such
"hopeless births." The remedy lies in the prevention of antenatal conditions which give rise
to such births. Improved parental health is believed to be the essential factor required to
prevent the birth of children without prospect of survival. Such improvement will not result
from "sanitation" alone. Education in personal hygiene and in all the essentials of home
life, and increased restraint of those habits which tend to lowered vitality must be added to
municipal control in sanitary matters.
As other Medical Officers of Health do not exclude the "hopeless births" from their
tables of infant mortality such deaths have been included in all the tables contained in this
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Report.
In Table II will be found the fully corrected rates (i.e., rates obtained after distribution of
births and deaths in institutions, exclusion of non-residents, &c.) in the circumjacent districts
of the Metropolis. The London rate was 7 per 1,000 above the local, but 19 below the
Metropolitan mean rate. The highest rate recorded last year was that of Kensington (128)
and the lowest that of Hampstead (69). All rates were considerably below the means.
The "fully corrected" rate for the Borough (on the Department's figures) was 110 per
1,000 persons, 131 per 1,000 males and 87 per 1,000 females. Such rates have been available
since 1905 only, and the figures for the three years, both for the Borough and the Wards, are
given in Table 25. The out-lying births being obtainable, at present, at the conclusion of the
year only, quarterly rates can be calculated after partial correction only. They are given in
Table 24a.