View report page

48
WANDSWORTH.
An examination of the following statistics, derived
from the Registrar-General's returns, and the parochial
records of sickness and mortality, discloses the occurrence
in this sub-district, during the year 1879, of higher rates
of sickness and death than have obtained for several
years. Nevertheless, in consequence of the remarkably
low death-rates which have prevailed of late years, that of
the past year will be found to have been still below the
average. The heightened mortality of the past year was
mainly due to the great prevalence of and severity of
diseases of the respiratory organs during a winter of
unusually low temperature; but it was also in great
measure due to the epidemic diseases, Measles, Scarlatina,
and Whooping Cough, the latter of which was attended
with unusual fatality.
VITAL STATISTICS.
Population.—According to the method of calculation
adopted by the Registrar-General, which is based upon the
assumption that the rate of increase of the population has
maintained the same proportion since the period of the
last census, as that which obtained during the ten preceding
years, the mean number of persons living during
the year 1879 was 25,093. But this estimate, although
sufficiently trustworthy for determining the population of
the whole country, is inapplicable to a metropolitan suburb
irregularly and disproportionately increasing by