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
Wandsworth 1866
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Wandsworth District, The Board of Works (Clapham, Putney, Streatham, Tooting & Wandsworth)]
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Assuming the population of this sub-district to have
increased only at the ordinary rate of the 10 years between
1851 and 1861, the present table will, when compared with
those of previous years, show that the deaths have not
increased in the same ratio.
In a year marked by the prevalence of such diseases as
those of Cholera and Diarrhoea, an increase in the number
of deaths was to be expected, but the 121 deaths registered
in 1866, will be found to yield a rate by no means exceeding
the average of any previous decennial period, if the usual
correction be made for increase of population.
The excess of births over deaths in the past year was
104, which furnishes an unusual addition to the population,
being 28 beyond the number for the previous year, when
the excess was but 76. The average yearly excess of the
five years preceding 1866, was 71. Putting then the
increase by immigration at only one half of that of the
natural increase, the death rate of the past year would
hardly reach the average point at which it has been shown
to stand for some years past, viz. : about 16 per 1,000
living. The mean annual death-rate of the 10 years preceding
the one in which the census was last taken, was
16.19 per 1,000 and since then there are good grounds for
believing it has undergone some considerable diminution.
Nothing therefore can be more satisfactory than these
statistics as an indication of the persistently favourable
condition of the public health of this parish.
But few further comments need be made upon the
mortuary table, but the points of interest which it discloses
may be thus very briefly summarized:—
1. Of the 121 deaths, a slight excess appears on the
side of the weaker sex, in the proportion of 64 females to
57 males.
2. Compared with the number in the report for 1865,
the infants and children dying and being registered at the
respective ages of "under one year," "from 1 to 5 years,"
and "from 5 to 10 years," are equal as to the first of these
periods, in excess of 5 as to the second, and less by 3