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21
CLAPHAM.
The Registrar General has made his statistics of 1868,
to embrace the mortality of 53 weeks, ended Saturday,
January 2nd, 1869. The tables accompanying my present
report are necessarily based on a similar calculation. The
following is the usual table with which I have commenced
my contributions to the annual report for some years past,
and I again employ it, because I consider there can be no
better introduction to the few comments it is my duty to
offer upon the sanitary proceedings, &c., of the past year.
This table, it maybe observed, exhibits, as usual, the number
of births and deaths, the excess of births over deaths, and
also the number of marriages in 1868 and the ten previous
years. It is worthy of remark that of the 272 marriages
that took place last year, 32 were what are termed
"registrar's marriages," that is to say, the compacts were
entered into before the Superintendent Registrar of the
District, and were not solemnized by any minister of
religion in either church or chapel.

Statistics of Mortality, &c.—In the past year the registered
deaths were 450, equally divided as to the sex, viz.,
225 of each, a rather unusual circumstance, seeing that in
most of my former reports, the female mortality has been
noted to exceed that of the male, sometimes to a very
considerable extent. In the table of the report for 1867,