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31
By an arrangement between the Board and the RegistrarGeneral
an officer attached to the General Register Office
now supplies the Medical Office rs of Health with the particulars
of parishioners dying in such outlying institutions, and
from the sub-district of East Battersea 110 persons were during
1883 driven by sickness poverty or both combined, to seek an
admission to Hospital, Infirmary, or Lunatic Asylum. This
number of deaths in the population of 60,758 is equal to a
death rate of 1*8 per thousand per annum. On the other hand,
many persons from the Country attending the Cancer, Consumption
or other Hospitals of the Metropolis, for convenience
reside temporarily in this sub-district, and while living
here succumb to the particular malady affecting them. These
cases, although to my own knowledge numerous, as is proved
by the many certificates of death given by the Medical Officers
of institutions, cannot be isolated, and therefore tend to unduly
exalt our death-rate.
If to the mortality rate of persons dying in the sub-district,
16'5 per thousand, the death-rate of persons from East Battersea
dying in outlying institutions, 1.8 per thousand, be added,
a gross death-rate of 18.3 per thousand will result, and as the
death-rate for the Metropolis generally was20.4 per thousand
for the year under report, a difference of 2.1 per thousand in
favor of the sub-district is clearly shewn to exist.
Of the deaths in outlying institutions 26 took place in the
Wandsworth and Clapham Infirmary; 5 in the County
Lunatic Asylum; and 80 in the other Hospitals and public
Institutions of the Metropolis.
Ages at death.—The ages at death of the fatal cases are to
the practical sanitarian of the utmost importance, as the
greatest waste of human life takes place during the earlier
years. Improved sanitation and the humane care taken of
those temporarily disabled by accident or sickness, and of the
aged and infirm, have so lengthened the duration of life,
that but little more, comparatively speaking, remains to
be done in the direction of greater longevity in the case of adults.
Under one year of age 383 deaths occurred, or 38.2 per cent.
of the deaths at all ages. Of these however 74 died from