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26
deaths.
remark that in the whole Borough increases above the averages (1908-12) have to be noted in
the case of males at ages 5-15, 25-65, and 65 and upwards ; and in the case of females at ages
0-5, 15-25, and 65 and upwards. No deaths were recorded last year at ages 0-5 in Lancaster
Gate, West (females), 5-15 in Lancaster Gate, East (males and females), and 15-25 Lancaster
Gate, East and Hyde Park (males).
In Table 24, the data for which have been extracted from the Quarterly Reports of the
Registrar-General, the total mortality in the Borough is compared with the like rates for the
Metropolis and the districts circumjacent to the Borough. The highest rate for 1913 included
in the table is that of St. Marylebone (14.02), and the lowest, that for Willesden (10.07). In the
last-named district only was the rate for 1913 lower than that for 1912, and in that district and
in St. Marylebone the 1913 rates were less that the respective averages, in all the others above.

Mortality rates based on total populations are not strictly comparable, either between district
and district or over a lengthy period of time in any district. Each sex and age has its special
liability to death, and consequently the total mortality observed in any given population
represents the resultant effect of the varying mortalities of the sex-age constituents of such
population. Total mortalities are without scale. Just as an ordinary photograph fails to convey
any true conception of the size of the subject unless some object of known dimensions be
included in a known relation to the primary subject, so total mortalities by themselves require
to be brought into relationship with a standard of known dimensions. The ideal method
of comparing mortalities is to apply the observed age-group rates of each locality to a standard
population, e.g., that of England and Wales in 1901, which is the standard at present in use at
the Register Offices of this country and of the United States of North America. Such
application would involve each year very laborious calculations, which can be obviated by the
use of "standardising factors" yielding very nearly identical comparisons. By this method the
average mortalities for a number of age-groups of each sex recorded in (say) England and
Wales are applied to the corresponding age-groups of the different populations, and from the
resulting totals of deaths so obtained "standard death-rates" for the different populations are
determined. The ratio of the standard death-rate of a district to a given standard death-rate
{e.g., of England and Wales) gives the "standardising factor" for that district. The RegistrarGeneral
in his Report for 1911 published factors* (the mortality of England and Wales being
taken as unity) for all the sanitary areas in the country, and Table 25 (first section—All Causes)
shows the standardised rates for the Borough and the circumjacent districts obtained from the
use of those factors. It will be noted that the standardised mortality rate in 1913 in the
Borough (13.30) is the third lowest of the series, lower rates being observed only in Hampstead
(11.29) and Willesden (10.57).
* 'I'he factors for pulmonary tuberculosis and cancer have been obtained from another source and will be
discussed later on.