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4
HEALTH OF THE ENTIRE DISTRICT.
ADOPTING the method employed by the Registrar-General in
calculating the annual death-rate of the whole of London, it is
found that the population of the entire Wandsworth District was
70,871 in the middle of the year 1861, or 490 more than at the
taking of the last census. Upon this basis it is calculated that the
death-rate of this district for the past year was 19.65 per 1,000;
the birth-rate, 31.24 per 1,000; and the rate of natural increase,
11.59 per 1,000.
Although there were 19 deaths registered in the entire district
in 1861 in excess of the number recorded in 1860, the usual
comparison of the year's mortality with that of the average of the
previous ten years, is but very slightly affected by such excess.
Taking, then, the population as 70,871, the excess referred to will
not be found to amount to more than one death in 10,000, or, in
fractional figures, not to exceed 0.16 in every 1,000, the average
rate of the 10 previous years being 19.49, and the actual death-rate
of the year under review, as above stated, 19.65 in every 1,000
living.
The slight excess here noted was undoubtedly due to the unusual
prevalence and fatality of zymotic diseases, since it is found
(vide Table I., Appendix) that 56 more deaths were registered as
the result of maladies of this class in the past year than in the one
immediately preceding, the numbers being respectively 287 and 221.
In the same table it will be seen that scarlet fever and diphtheria
alone resulted in death in 107 cases, whilst in 1860 the same diseases
contributed to the register 55 deaths only, or less by nearly onehalf.
The fatality of these two closely allied diseases was, however,
by no means confined to this district, but was common to the entire
metropolis, so that the 19 deaths in excess of the previous year in