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29
BATTERSEA.
The Medical Officers of Health, taking into consideration
the fact that the Parish of Battersea has, during a
portion of the past year only, been divided into two
distinct divisions, find it impracticable to present a
separate report for either Sub-district, the more especially
as no provision has been made by the Registrar General
for an apportionment of the number of births and other
statistical details to the respective sub-divisions of the
Parish. The present report consequently applies to the
whole Parish, as has heretofore been the case.
The year 1871 has been an exceptional one, it having
been the census year, and one in which vital statistics
would consequently possess more indisputable claims to
consideration than for several years past, during which the
real numbers and rate of increase of the population could
be merely assumed.
Although these statistics are made good use of by the
Registrar General, it is somewhat doubtful whether his mode
of deducing his death-rates can quite so well meet the requirements
of such an exceptional locality as Battersea, as
it does most of the other Metropolitan parishes, since it is
known that the increase of population of this Sub-district
has proceeded, during the last decade, in such a very
unusual manner as to defy all ordinary calculations. To
obtain indeed even a tolerably accurate death-rate for this
parish, it would seem to be almost necessary to institute
an annual census, or at all events to secure a much more
frequent enumeration of the inhabitants than appears at
present attainable. The Registrar General has not been
slow to recognise this peculiarity of the parish, for he observes
in his last Annual Summary that "The most
remarkable case of increase of population between 1861-71
occurred in the Battersea Sub-district"; and this will
be thoroughly understood when it is stated, that the