View report page

6
By this table it will be seen that in April, 1851, the
population was ascertained to be 55,764 only. Between
four and five years after the taking of this Census, viz., on
the 14th of August, 1855, the Metropolis Local Management
Act came into operation, and the sanitary control of
the District was then undertaken by the newly constituted
Board of Works. Assuming the population at this latter
period had reached over 60,000, it is clear that, as the
number of inhabitants is now (April, 1871) upwards of
125,000, the District Board has to exercise its powers over
considerably more than double the number of people it did
when it was first inaugurated, and that consequently the
responsiblities of the Board and the duties of its officers
must have become, since such inauguration, proportionately
greater every year.
Death-rate, Birth-rate, and Rate of Natural Increase,
—It would be obviously incorrect to take the figures
respecting the number of deaths in a given year, and then
proceed to calculate the proportion which those deaths bear
to a population ascertained three months alter the close of
such year. In order, therefore, to deduce a correct deathrate
for 1870, it will be necessary to adopt the method
employed by the Registrar-General, and to make such a
correction of the population return of April, 1871, as will
place the number of inhabitants of the entire District at its
proper figure in the middle of the year under review. This
being done it has been found that the rate of mortality in
1870 (the deaths in that year being 2,650) was as near as
can be calculated 22.1 in every 1,000 persons living. This,
it will be observed, is nearly 3 less than the rate for the
whole of London in the same year, which was 24.12.
Considering the rate of mortality that attended several
of the diseases of the Zymotic class (Scarletina amongst
the number, to which in the past year as many as 352
deaths were attributed), the above result cannot be considered
altogether unsatisfactory.