London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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London County Council 1912

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for London County Council]

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190 Annual Report of the London County Council, 1912.
Fits, other than in infancy—
In father 34
„ mother 49
„ brothers and sisters 134
„ collaterals 85
„ grandparents 83
Member of family not specified 25
Mental deficiency—
In father 96
„ mother 127
„ brothers and sisters 259
„ collaterals 33
„ grandparents 6
All the family described as "dull" 89
One brother or sister defective 137
Two brothers or sisters ,, 87
Three „ „ „ 21
Four „ „ „ 6
Five „ „ „ 6
Six „ „ 1
Eight „ „ „ 1
Members in family defective.—In the case of 700 families it was possible to note the total number
of children in the family and the number who were defective; from the results obtained it appeared
that on an average 143 were mentally defective in a family of the average size of 6-05 children. |
Number of
children
defective.
Number of children in the family (size of fraternity).
Total.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
1 37 45 59 49 78 84 45 47 12 23 14 8 9 4 3 — 1 1 — 2 521
2 3 15 13 14 11 12 12 3 4 1 1 2 2 — 2 — — 1 — 96
3 4668 11 10 22111132 — — — — 58
4 211232211 — — — — — — — — 15
5 1 1 — — 1 — — 1 — — — — — — 4
6 121— 1 — — — — — — — — 5
7 1— — — — — — — — — 1
Totals 37 48 78 70 99 104 71 74 21 32 19 12 12 8 6 4 1 1 1 2 700
The number of members of each of these 700 families recorded as being defective, epileptic or
insane was thus distributed:—
No. affected. No. of families.
1 367
2 148
3 79
4 49
5 32
6 10
7 6
8 5
9 2
10 1
11 1
Order of child in the fraternity.—Some forms of mental deficiency are believed to affect the later
members of large families. In order to ascertain if this applied generally to the children in special schools,
the number of children in the family and the order of birth of the defective child were taken from the
records of 1,000 families. To obtain a normal series for comparison the same data were extracted from
the records of 1,000 junior county and trade scholars, who would represent the best of the elementary
school population. Comparison can also be made with data from the village colony for epileptics at
Spillman, New Jersey.
Type. Number observed. Order of l.irth. Standard deviation. Size of fraternity. Standard deviation.
Defectives (1,000) 4.35 3.24 6.32 3.27
Epileptics (391) 3.61 2.48 6.32 3.24
Normals (1,000) 2.87 2.16 4.79 2.55