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46
REPORT ON INFANTILE MORTALITY.
In the autumn of the year under consideration the excessive deathrate
from Summer Diarrhæa and allied intestinal complaints induced the
Public Health Committee to appoint a sub-committee to consider the
whole question of infantile mortality, and the steps that could be taken
either by the establishment of creches, or municipal milk depots, the
issuing of more literature on the subject, or any other means to control
or lessen it.
The following report was made to the sub-committee.
INFANTILE MORTALITY.
The energetic steps that are now being taken in different parts of
the country to check the enormous mortality of children under one year
of age, together with the evidence recently given before the Committee
on Physical Deterioration, have quickened the conscience of the nation to
a condition of affairs calling for the closest inquiry and attention.
The tables appended to this report clearly show a vast waste of life
in the tender and very early months of infancy. It may be said that the
statistics prepared by Dr. Tatham at the Registrar General's Office,
prove that we are in no worse position in regard to this matter of Infant
mortality than we were thirty years ago. That may be so, but it is no
great consolation to think that if we have not gone back, we have certainly
made but little progress in a period when the improvement in all
other sanitary matters has been so pronounced.
The period in which the greatest infant mortality occurs is the third
quarter of the year, that is during the hottest months. The past summer
which has been comparatively hot and dry shows that "weather" exercises
an immense influence on this mortality. This is in accordance with
our experience for many years past, for in the years and decades when
the temperature was high and the weather dry a high death rate has been
present, whilst with a low temperature and wet weather there has been
a low death rate. The deaths in infants which had rarely been more
than 40 for the fortnight, for the first six months of this year, as seen in
my report to the Council, rose during the three fortnights of the latter
part of July and the whole of August to 79, 123, and 59 respectively. The
same excessive mortality occurred in the other London boroughs and in
the rest of the country. In Table 25 of the Registrar General's Annual
Report is given the following decennial figures for England and Wales,
covering the whole period of registration.