View report page

58
Death-rate.
Determined firm the (fficial estimate of ihe
population and the total deaths registered the death-rate
of the past year, after correction for deaths in public
institutions, was 11.81 per 1000. The correction referred
to consists in eliminating from the calculation the number
of inmates with the deaths occurring in those institutions
situated within the sub-district by which the deathregister
is unduly raised; thus, the inmates of the
Middlesex County Lunatic Asylum, St. Peter's Hospital,
and the Hospital for Incurables, are almost exclusively
derived from without the sub-district, undergo no natural
increase, and are subject to a high mortality, the latter
forming on an average about one fifth of all deaths
registered. Such an amount must obviously vitiate any
calculation of the death-rate derived solely from the
death register, and cause it to represent the fluctuations
of the mortality of those institutions, instead of that
proper to the sub-district. It might be assumed that the
unprecedentedly low death-rate of the past year was
due to the circumstance that a larger number of eases of
infectious disease were treated in hospital than formerly,
but if the whole of the deaths of Wandsworth
parishioners that took place in hospitals and other outlying
institutions, (and which may fairly be assumed to
be equalled by the deaths of non-parishoners within the
sub-district) be included in the calculation, the rate
would still amount to 14.76 per 1000 only, or 2.24 per
1000 less than that of the healthiest rural districts.
The Birth and Death rates for the past and ten preceding
years, calculated hy the official method, are
compared in the following table;—