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7
Public Health Department,
Town Hall,
Pancras Road, N.W. 1.
May, 1923.
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of the
Metropolitan Borough of St. Pancras.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to present to you the Sixty-Seventh Annual Report on the vital statistics
and health conditions of the Sanitary District of St. Pancras, including particulars of the year's
work of the Public Health Department. It is the tenth annual report which it has been my duty
to submit to the Borough Council.
The total mortality in 1922 was somewhat greater than in the years immediately preceding.
The death-rate was, in fact, 14.6 per 1,000 population, compared with 13.0, 13.6 and
13'8 in 1921, 1920 and 1919, respectively.* This increase in the death-rate was due in part to a
recrudescence of influenza, which, with associated causes of death, chiefly respiratory, caused
considerable mortality in the first ten weeks of the year ; and the fact that measles was
epidemic during the early part of the year. No doubt the unfavourable economic conditions
continuing to prevail in 1922 also had an adverse influence. The mortality amongst children
under one year of age was less than in the preceding year, when it was increased somewhat by
the summer drought, and was the smallest ever recorded in the borough except for 1920. The
birth-rate in 1922 again showed a decline.
In regard to infectious diseases, the chief feature of the year was the outbreak of influenza
referred to above. In the first ten weeks of the year the number of deaths certified as due to
influenza was 120, as compared with 24 in the corresponding weeks of 1921; and from diseases of
the heart, bronchitis and pneumonia, which are influenced by influenza, 360, as compared with
238. The periodical outbreak of measles occurred in 1922 and caused 100 deaths of children in
the months from January to May inclusive. The incidence of, and mortality from, scarlet fever
and diphtheria remained at a high level, but both of these diseases had begun to decline by the
end of the year. Deaths from tuberculosis remained at about the same level as in 1920 and 1921,
and much lower than during the war years.
Certain detailed results of the Census of June, 1921, have now been published, and the
figures in regard to housing in St. Pancras again disclose an extremely unsatisfactory position.
* Based on the Census population, corrected to the middle of 1921.