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advancing years. A few will need a short period of hospitalisation until they can be trained
and acclimatised to live in comfort and even to work, despite their age ; and there will be
in the end what I believe will be a small residue who will need permanent residence in a
hospital or institution. I feel the time has come when the Council should foster a central
committee which shall be responsible for those aged persons in the Borough who need help.
Experience is showing that there are many old people in institutions whose condition of
helplessness is in fact due to their entering an institution too soon, or staying there for an
unnecessarily long time. I hope that in the year 1949 the Council will give this matter its
very careful consideration.
Care of Blind Persons in St. Pancras.
For the first time last year I reported on the special care which the Health Department
was taking of blind persons.
During 1948 this special care was continued. It is directed towards seeing that no
sanitary defects in the premises which they occupy remain unremedied because such defects
are not apparent to the blind persons. Furthermore, we are sometimes able to take steps
under the Housing Act to provide for them amenities to which they are entitled and which
can make living much easier for them. An example of this would be the right of a family in
a tenement dwelling to have a water supply on their own floor. To a blind person such an
amenity means a considerable increase in comfort. During 1948 water was in fact supplied
in four cases and 26 notices were served on landlords requiring the abatement of sanitary
nuisances.
A Home Help was offered in 19 cases by the L.C.C. and accepted in 17.
There are in fact 75 persons residing in the Borough who are either totally blind or so
blind as to be unable to do ordinary work for which sight is required. At least one visit was
paid during the year in every case.
Statistics.
The population of the Borough was 140,200 in the middle of 1948, showing an increase
of 3,500. In 1944 the population of the Borough was 105,780, so that there has been an
increase of nearly 35,000 in four years. This increase has in the past been occasioned by the
return of families who have been evacuated, and later by demobilisation and an increase
in the number of births. The present increase would appear to be due to the new families
coming to reside in the Borough.
The post-war increase in marriages appears to have come to an end, for with a figure
of 1,575 there were two less than in 1947.
The birth rate has fallen from 20.4 per thousand in 1947 to 17.4 in 1948, and with
2,447 births to residents of the Borough there are 346 less than in the previous year. Four
years ago the birth rate was 18.1 and the number of births, 1,914; but the population was
then only 105,780.
Infantile Mortality.
The infantile mortality rate in 1948 was 37 per thousand. This means that there was
an increase of three per thousand on the previous year. This figure is unfortunate in that
it is the first time since 1943 that the infantile mortality rate has risen, and this despite the
fact that the infantile mortality rate for the country as a whole is 34 per thousand, the first
time it has ever been below 40. It is, however, pleasing to report that the infantile mortality
(6594) a 3