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Notification of Births Acts, 1907 and 1915.—These Acts require the father of a child,
if actually residing in the house where a birth takes place at the time of its occurrence., and
any person in attendance upon the mother at the time of, or within six hours after, the birth,
to give notice in writing of the birth to the Medical Officer of Health of the district in which
the child is born, in the manner provided. Notification applies in the case where a child has
issued forth from its mother after the expiration of the twenty-eighth week of pregnancy,
whether alive or dead.
In practice, it is almost always the doctor or midwife who notifies a birth, and not the
father of the child.
During the year 2,043 live births were notified to the Medical Officer of Health. There
were also 43 stillbirths notified. Of the 2,086 living and stillbirths notified, 43.6 per cent,
were notified by medical practitioners, 38.3 per cent, by midwives, 2.7 per cent, by parents,
and 15.4 per cent, by medical students or other persons.
A comparison of the Notification Register with the returns supplied by the local Registrars
of Births shows that 97.4 per cent, of the births occurring within the Borough were duly
notified. It will be seen that only a small proportion of births are not notified and are not
brought to the notice of the Medical Officer of Health until they come to be registered within
the statutory period of six weeks. In nearly every case of default a cautionary letter was sent
to the person responsible, and in no instance did the Maternity and Child Welfare Committee
consider it necessary to institute legal proceedings.
DEATHS.
The number of deaths that were registered during the year as having taken place in the
Borough was 2,006.
Of these, 489 were of persons whose residence was not in Paddington, 377 dying in
Paddington Institutions and 112 in other places in the Borough.
There were also reported to the Registrar-General 419 deaths of Paddington persons
whose deaths occurred outside the Borough.
This correction gives the nett number of deaths for Paddington as 1,936, making an annual
death-rate of 13.56.
Even allowing for the fluctuating estimate of population there was a real but slight rise
in the death-rate of the borough in 1927. This was largely accounted for by the prevalence
of influenza and respiratory diseases associated with it in the first two months of the year.