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7
The Registrar.General, commenting in his 68th Annual Report,
which deals with the year 1905, on the decrease in the birth.rate,
points out that during the past thirty.five years the marriage.rate, based
on total population, has declined by more than 8 per cent., and when
based on the total number of marriageable persons in the community,
with corrections for age and sex, 22 per cent. Coincidently with this
fall there has been a steady decrease in the ages of the persons married,
thereby shortening the period of possible child.bearing; in addition to
these there can be little doubt that part of the decrease in the birth.rate
is due to the deliberate restriction of child.bearing.
Registration of Births.-The increased attention which is now being
given to infant life has brought out the disability which hampers the
work of local authorities in that births need not be registered for six
weeks after they have occurred, and before compulsion could be brought
to bear a longer period might elapse.
More than one.third of the babies who die under one year of age do
so before they are a month old, and therefore before any official knowledge
of their existence has taken place. It is evident, if instruction or
help is to be given to parents as to the rearing of their children,
information of the birth must be given at a much earlier period than is
at present the case. Efforts to prevent death or injury to health cannot
begin too early. In Scotland the period within which registration
should take place is three weeks ; in France three days, and, through a
recent Act, Parliament has reduced the limit in Huddersfield to two
•days, and a shilling is paid for each notification thereof. The Congress
of Infantile Mortality last summer passed a resolution that notification
of all births should be given to the Medical Officer of Health of the
district within forty.eight hours.
The Registrar.General is reported to have come to the conclusion
that, whilst it would be unwise at present to disturb the existing
organisation of birth registration, a well.devised system of early notification
of births-legalised and worked in conjunction with the present
registration system on the one hand, and with sanitary administration
•on the other-might, along with other motive forces, serve as a most
effective and lasting barrier with which to stem the tide of infant
mortality.
The City of Westminster Health Society state in their Annual
Report that they have made arrangements with the various general and
lying.in hospitals in the City and neighbourhood, whereby the Society
is supplied from time to time with list of impending maternity cases on
their books, they are thus able to visit the houses before the confinement
takes place; and subsequently they visit once a month, or oftener if
required, during the first three months, later on once a quarter.