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67
Table I. gives also the averages for the previous 10
years, the numbers for the year 1874, and the averages for
the seven last years (including 1874), about which the
information is complete.
It appears, then, that the gross total of deaths for 1874
was l,694 anumber less than that for any other year
except the two last, 1872 and 1873, and was much less than
the average totals either for the whole period or for the
last seven years; and this in spite of the fact that it was a
vj£earof 53 weeks And if we make it a year of 52 weeks,
by subtracting one-fourteenth part of the number of deaths
for the last quarter (which is, perhaps, the fairest way), the
gross total for 52 weeks is 1,658, or less than it was last year.
It must be remembered, however, that St. George's Hospital
was closed for repairs for a considerable time, so that
the number of deaths of persons in Public Institutions (345)
was less than it would have been, and so it will be better to
consider the gross total for the year as 1,694.
I calculate the population of the Parish as 90,423 at
the middle of 1874; so that the gross death-rate has been
only 18.73 per 1,000 per annum (making no allowance
whatever for the extra week), or very nearly the same as in
1873.
Tofind the calculated death-rate, we must subtract the
345 deaths in Public Institutions from the gross total—
1,694, which leaves 1,349 as the total for 53 weeks; we
must then take away one fifty-third part* from this, which
leaves 1,324, and lastly add to it 355, our share of the
deaths which occurred in Public Institutions throughout
* N.B.—This is the most unfavourable way of making the correction
for the extra week; had I taken one-fourteenth of the deaths in the last
quarter, or one-sixth of those for the six weeks ending January 2nd,
1876, as the correction, the total would have been smaller.