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6
Matters which the Minister does not wish to be excluded from this
report are tuberculosis (including the allowance scheme), progress of
diphtheria immunization, poliomyelitis and the care of premature infants
and illegitimate children. All these receive due comment but venereal
disease mentioned also by the Minister is not within the purview of the
City Council.
The population, according to the Registrar General's estimate, rose
from90,110in 1946 to 103,440 in 1947. This estimated increase of 13,000
persons is confirmed by the data in the possession of the Local Food
Executive Officer. It is a very substantial increase, the equivalent of a
country town and cannot be due solely to a return of residents to their
former homes. It must largely reflect the prodigious efforts made in
providing additional housing by requisitioning houses, adapting them
into multiple dwellings and by the restoration of severely damaged
properties. Overcrowding still exists but in no more aggravated degree
than before the war but it is true to say that houses, particularly those
let in single furnished rooms are occupied more fully; for example, rooms
formerly let to individuals often now contain married couples.
The birth rate at 15-4 per 1,000 living at all ages is slightly higher
and contrasts with a rate of 8-2 in 1937, the last year of freedom from
rumours of war and, dare one say it, peace and plenty. Now in an era
of controls, scarcities, tightened belts, and uncertainties as to the economic
future, the number of babies born has almost doubled. This surely is
not the reaction of a downcast people but rather of a virile and confident
race. Motherhood for the moment is all in the fashion. Before the war
it was rather demode. Young married people in that decade thought
that to have children was old fashioned and unintelligent. But it
must be remembered that after the 1914-18 war there was a similar rise
in the birth rate ; in Westminster it went up to 16-1 in 1920 but did not
remain at that high level falling to 10-5 in 1930.
The death rate at 11-0 per 1,000 compares with 11-3 in 1946. If it
had not been for the severe wintry conditions in the first three months
of 1947 the death rate might have been still lower because of the ameliorating
influences of the exceptionally warm summer of 1947, so fine that it
almost echoed the golden summers of 1911 and 1921. The very old and
the very young tend to wither and die in very cold winters.
Diseases of the heart and blood vessels again accounted for more
than a third of all deaths ; malignant disease less than one-fifth, while,
•tuberculosis which in 1920 caused 157 deaths, in 1947 caused 73 deaths
As regards infectious disease, there was an outbreak of Poliomyelitis
and Polio-Encephalitis which appeared in July and continued until
December. The total cases in England and Wales notified was 9,262 ;
in London, 1,058, and in Westminster 21. None of the Westminster
cases died but there were 49 deaths in London and 708 in England and
Wales. Sixteen cases of Diphtheria were notified in Westminster com-