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6
Parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark.
Deaths and Death=Rate for 1897.
1,219 deaths were registered in the parish during the fifty-two weeks ending 1st
January, 1898, giving an average of 23 4 per week. Of this total 151 were deaths of
non-parishioners in hospitals and asylums within the district. In addition 358
parishioners died in outside public institutions and extra-metropolitan asylums. There
were therefore 1,426 deaths among your parishioners, equivalent to an average mortality
of 232 per 1,000. The death rate for all London in the same year was 181 per 1,000,
which is in itself, according to many authorities, 2.1 more per 1,000 than should occur
from "the mortality incident to human nature." In St. George's, then, the "death toll,"
as it as been aptly called, claims 5.1 persons out of every 1,000 in excess of an already
excessive rate. On the latter estimate, that of the whole of London, there have been
some 308 unnecessary deaths in St. George's, Southwark, during the year 1897.
In the forty-three metropolitan sanitary areas the lowest death-rates were 11 8 in
Hampstead, 12 8 in Lewisham (excluding Penge,) 13.2 in St. George, Hanover Square
and in Lee, 13 4 in Wandsworth, 13.7 in Plumstead and 14.3 in Stoke Newington;
the highest rates were 22.1 in Clerkenwell, in St. Olave, Southwark, and in Bermondsey,
23.1 in Holborn, 23.2 in St. George, Southwark, 24.6 in St. Saviour, Southwark, 25.l
in Limehouse, 25.7 in St. Luke, and 26.4 in St. George-in-the-East.
The facts of your death-rate are briefly as follows:—

It is clear then, that the death-rate of St. George's, Southwark, is abnormally high.
One is naturally led to enquire whether a further analysis of facts and figures will throw
any light upon this state of affairs.
On comparing the average death-rate in the three sub-districts for the years
1892-3-4-5-6-7 with that of 1897 we find:—