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REPORT
of the Medical Officer of Health
for the year 1955
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors
of the Metropolitan Borough of Wandsworth
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have great pleasure in presenting to you the Annual Report on
the health and sanitary conditions of the Borough for the year 1955.
This is the fourth complete year for which I have had the privilege
of supervising the health services in this area and of being responsible
for the Council's public health activities. This report follows
the general form of previous reports and the statistical tables it
contains give hard facts about our work. In this preamble, I draw
your attention to one or two, as it seems to me, of the more important
parts of the work.
In 1954 there was a slight increase in the population as compared
with the previous year and this increase was continued in 1955, the
population of Wandsworth at the year end being 336,500. This
increase is associated with the new housing estates which have arisen
and which continue to arise, in the Borough and to which families
are transferred from many other parts of London. It is to be expected
that this gradual increase of population will continue as the
new housing estates approach completion. The birth rate for 1955
was 13.73, a slight increase over the previous year, while the
standardized death rate was 13.30, a little above that for 1954. The
infant mortality rate, that is to say, the number of infants who died
before reaching their first birthday per thousand live births, was
24.4, an increase of five points over the previous year. The figure
last year was the lowest ever recorded in Wandsworth and while