London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
City of Westminster 1926
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Westminster, City of]
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12
The distribution of deaths in the various wards of the City are
shown in the following table, and may be compared with the similar
figures during the four preceding years:—
Table VII.
| - | 1922. | 1923. | 1924. | 1925. | 1926. | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M. | F. | Total. | m. | F. | Total. | m. | f. | Total. | m. | f. | Total | m. | f. | Total. | |
| 6 | 4 | - | 5 | 6 | |||||||||||
| 95 | 124 | ||||||||||||||
| 34 | |||||||||||||||
| 127 | |||||||||||||||
| 360 | |||||||||||||||
| 70 | |||||||||||||||
| 34 | |||||||||||||||
| 24 | 30 | ||||||||||||||
| 43 | |||||||||||||||
| 78 | |||||||||||||||
| 23 | 40 | ||||||||||||||
Infantile Mortality.—The corrected death-rate of infants for Westminster
was 59.7 per 1,000 births. The mortality among legitimate
infants was 52.4 per 1,000; that of illegitimate 127.3. The infant
mortality rate for London was 64.
These figures show a considerable improvement on those of 1925,
during the early part of which there occurred a severe epidemic of
whooping cough. Although this disease was not very prevalent in
1926, there was an almost equally severe outbreak of measles, which,
however, was not so far reaching in fatal results. Seven infants under
1 year died of whooping cough in 1925, whilst 4 died of measles in 1926.
The latter year was fortunate in that while the number of births had
increased from 1,535 to 1,606, the deaths of infants during the first year
had fallen from 106 to 96.
Table XI shows that more than 50 per cent. of the deaths of infants
under one year occurred during the first month of life. Of the total 96
infants who died, 41 were under one week old. Prematurity accounted
for 30 of the group under one month. This cause seems to have affected