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STPAN 17
FIFTH ANNUAL REPORT
OF THE
MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH,
foe the year i860.
TO THE VESTRY OF SAINT PANCEA8.
Gentlemen,
During the year 1860 the deaths registered in St. Pancras numbered
4234. This number includes 117 deaths of paupers in the Strand Union, which
may fairly be excluded in estimating the mortality of St. Pancras. The number
is thus reduced to 4117.* In looking back for several years the number of deaths
is found to be in 1855, 4336; in 1856, 3857; in 1857, 3887; in 1858, 4509;
and in 1859, 4276.
The mortality in 1860 will admit of favourable comparison with that in 1855,
in 1858, and 1859; and is only slightly above that ill 1856 and 1857, when
allowance has been made for the increase in population.
I am this year in a position to calculate the death-rate more accurately than
in former years, by means of the census which has recently been taken.
The population of this parish ascertained by the census on the 1st April last,
was 198,882. Prom this number, by supposing that the rate of increase during
the ten years has been uniform, the population in the middle of the year 1860
may be estimated at 196,000. If this number be taken, it gives a death-rate of
2'15 per cent., or 215 deaths to every ten thousand living. The death-rate in
London, as a whole, was about 223 to every ten thousand.
As compared with the surrounding districts the mortality in St. Pancras was
higher than in the northern districts of London, under which are included St.
Marylebone, Hampstcad, and Islington ; it was also higher than in the western
districts, which include Kensington, Chelsea, St. George's, Hanover Square,
"Westminster, St. Martin's-in-the-fields, and St. James's, 'Westminster.
* This number is not strictly accurate, because it includes deaths in the Up' .ersity College and
Royal Free Hospitals of persons not previously resident in the parish, and includes other deaths
of St. Pancras people which occur in the hospitals of the adjoining parishes. Of the dea'hs in
University College Hospital, 60 were not of St. Pancras people, and of those in the Free Hospital,
53 were not parishioners. Whilst in the Middlesex, Bartholomew, Charing Cross, King's
College, Children's and Fever Hospitals, there were 72 deaths of St. Pancras people. By making
corrections for these numbers we should have 4070 instead of 4117 deaths.