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4
SANITARY STATE OF THE ENTIRE DISTRICT.
The births registered in the entire Wandsworth District
during the year 1865 numbered 2989—1573 of males and
1416 of females. The deaths were 1783; 910 of males
and 873 of females. The excess of births over deaths was,
consequently, 1206.
Calculated from the death register and an estimated
population, the death-rate for the past year was 21.94 per
1000 parsons living, or rather more than two per 1000
higher than the average. The birth-rate according to a
similar calculation was 36.78 per 1000, and the rate of
natural increase 14.84 per 1000 of the entire population.
The increased death-rate over that of previous years
may be attributed to the occurrence of an unusual amount
of epidemic disease, the fatality attending which is found
to have varied very considerably in the several sub-districts,
as will be seen by a comparison of the local and general
tables of mortality.
The difference between the number of deaths resulting
from the seven principal epidemic diseases in the past
year, and in that immediately preceding it, was 75, the
respective numbers having been 343 in 1865, and 268 in
1864. The average number for the past 10 years was
222.
The ratio of deaths from these diseases to the total
deaths from all causes was 19.2 per cent. for the past
year, and 15.8 per cent. for the previous year. The average
of the past 10 years was 17.5 per cent. This percentage,
high as it is, does not, however, reach the exceptional one
of 1863, which was 29.9. In 1859 it was 21.4, but in no
year since 1856, excepting those named (1859 and 1863)
did it attain 19.0. In three of the nine years preceding the
one to which this report relates, it will not be found to
have exceeded 13.6.
While the deaths from Small Pox and Measles were in
the past two years nearly equal, and from Diphtheria less
by one half in the past than in the preceding year, there
was a considerable increase in 1865 over 1864 in the