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87
year amounted to 30,675. The unprecedentedly great in crease
in the number of births however which will be subseq uently
shewn to have taken place during the year indicates a large
accession to the population by immigration. Such increase is
otherwise inexplicable ; for it was far too great to have been
due to a higher rate of natural increase, any excess moreover
in this direction being very improbable from the circumstance
that the birth-rate for all London was the lowest recorded
since 1860.
Mortality.—The total deaths registered during the year
were 576 in number = 284 of males and 292 of females, and
were slightly below the average; for had the same rate of
mortality that prevailed during the preceding ten years
continued during the past year, the deaths in the latter,
allowing for increase of poplation would have numbered 580.
No less than 126 of the deaths occurred in public
institutions situated within the parish, viz :—in the Surrey
County Lunatic Asylum, 98; in the Hospital for Incurables,
15; in St. Peter's Hospital, 3; in the Prison, 9; and in the
Patriotic Asylum for Girls 1: and 62 deaths of Wandsworth
parishioners took place in the Union Infirmary and various
Metropolitan Hospitals located without the parish.
Death-rate.—Calculated from the fore-going estimate of the
population and the total deaths registered, the death-rate was
18.77 per 1,000 persons living on an average during the past
year. Inclusive of the deaths of parishioners that took
place in institutions without the parish the rate was 20.81 per
1,000.
Both of these calculations, however, as explained in
previous Reports, fail to represent the natural death-rate of
the sub-district, inasmuch as they include the deaths of the
Surrey County Lunatic Asylum, St. Peter's Hospital, and
the Hospital for Incurables, the inmates of which institutions
are, with a fractional exception, derived from without the
parish, undergo no natural increase, and are necessarily