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HEALTH AND SANITARY CONDITION
OF THE ENTIRE DISTRICT.
General Remarks.
It is necessary to premise that, in order to prevent
confusion in his tabulation, and to obviate the necessity of
dividing the returns of births and deaths for a complete
week, the Registrar General has made his official year of
1873 to embrace 53 weeks, terminating on Saturday, the 3rd
January, 1874, Saturday being the day on which his statistical
totals are always made up for publication. In this
somewhat extended year, the registered deaths in the entire
Wandsworth District were found to number 2,580 (Males
1,293, and Females 1,287.) The Registrar General gives
in his summary of totals one death more than the Medical
Officers of Health, viz., 2,581 instead of 2,580. This arises
from a death being registered a second time by one of the
local Registrars. The registered births during the same
period were 5,053, (of Males 2,576, and of Females 2,477.)
The excess of births over deaths, representing the natural
increase of the population, is therefore 2,473. The
estimated full increase, admitting, of course, into the
calculation the immigrational element, is found to be to
the extent of raising the figures arrived at in the middle
of the year 1872, (131,891,) to 137,356 at the corresponding
period of the year under review.
Although the Medical Officers of Health, in view of
several disturbing circumstances of which they are
cognizant, must of necessity estimate, from time to time,
the increase of the population of some of the Sub-districts
as being considerably greater than the mode of calculation
of the Registrar General would seem to warrant, it is