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7
WANDSWORTH.
The following Report contains a summary of all the principal
facts which are essential for the determination of the sanitary state of this
parish during the year 1859. They are derived from an analysis of the
Registrar General's Returns and the Parochial Records of Sickness and Mortality,
and are for the most part tabulated for the purpose of affording facility
for comparison with those of former years, and for illustrating the conclusions
and inferences which are capable of being elicited from those sources of
information.
Mortality—Death-rate—Birth-rate—Natural Increase.
The total number of deaths registered during the past year was 311; 178
were of males and 133 of females. The average number during the past ten years
was 295. But an annual comparison of the deaths registered furnishes a very
imperfect means of determining the status of the health of this parish unless
certain conditions, which unduly increase or diminish the mortality, be taken
into consideration. Thus, of the total deaths registered last year, 106 occurred
in the following institutions, viz., in the House of Correction 6, in Saint Peters'
Hospital 4, and in the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum 96. The inmates of
these institutions are, with a fractional exception, derived from without the
parish, and undergo no natural increase; in the second named are all aged
people; and in the third, as in all such asylums, are subject to a very high
mortality.
In this way the natural death-rate of the parish, which can be alone
employed in forming an estimate of its sanitary state, is unduly increased;
on the other hand, it is diminished in consequence of the deaths of the aged
and infirm or destitute poor of this parish who enter the workhouse being
registered in Battersea, the workhouse being situated in that parish. In
determining the natural death-rate, therefore, it is necessary, in order to ensure
a just result, to withdraw from the calculation the population and mortality of
the three first-named institutions, and to add to it the deaths of Wandsworth
parishioners which have occurred in the workhouse.
The death-rate for the past year deduced from the present estimated
population,* and the deaths proper to this parish in accordancc with the
foregoing considerations, was 18.7 per 1000 living. For 1858 it was 17.05;
for 1857, 15.4; and for 1856, 21.3; during the previous 10 years it averaged
21.79 per 1000.
356 births—186 males and 170 females—were registered during the past
year. The average number for the past 10 years was 321. The birth-rate
was 31.3 per 1000; the natural rate of increase 12 per 1000.
*This estimate is based upon the assumption that the population has increase
since 1851, in the same ratio as during the preceding ten years.