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PART I.
A. STATISTICS
Population.
The Registrar-General has issued the following Memorandum:—
Estimate of Civil Population, 1915.—The war has made it impossible
to adhere to the methods of estimation of local and national populations
hitherto in use. Men of military age have been largely drafted to
military training centres or sent abroad with the Army, and the
remainder of the male adult population, as well as, to a lesser extent,
the female population, has migrated on an unprecedented scale into areas
other than those in which it was enumerated at the last census.
Under these circumstances, estimates of local populations based on
the census returns were clearly inadmissible, and it became necessary to
search for a substitute. Fortunately this was ready to hand in the shape
of the National Register, which referred to a date only six weeks
removed from that for which estimates were required, viz., the middle
of the year 1915. No doubt this does not form a perfect record, as it is
known that a number of persons escaped registration. From investigations,
however, which have been made in another connection, it appears
that the defects in the register, taken as a whole, are not 011 such a scale
as to affect seriously the estimates of population based upon it. By the
method described below it was possible to derive from these returns
estimates of the civil population only of each administrative area on
August 15th. No attempt has been made to increase these by allowance
for members of the fighting forces because, apart altogether from the
difficulty of ascertaining the average military population of each district
during the year, experience has shown that under present circumstances
only civilian deaths can be tabulated for local areas. If military deaths
were to be included they would have either to be debited to the area in
which they occurred, a course which would render the death-rates ol
districts containing large military hospitals meaningless, or to the area
of residence. An attempt made to pursue the latter course has had to
be abandoned owing to military authorities having been unable to furnish
to the registrars the necessary information. It has been found necessary
therefore to limit the tabulation of deaths by local areas to deaths of
civilians, and under these circumstances the civilian population is
obviously the proper one to use for the calculation of death-rates.