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4
appointment to the chair of tuberculosis in the Welsh National School of Medicine.
He had previously been loaned part-time to the Ministry of Health as adviser on
the B.C.G. scheme.
Appointments
Appointments of senior staff were Dr. G. D. Pirrie as senior medical officer for
the School Health Service, Dr. H. G. Williams as psychiatrist and Dr. Violet Russell
as Divisional Medical Officer for Division 1.
Population
VITAL STATISTICS
The Registrar-General estimates the total population of the county in the
middle of 1949 to have been 3,389,850. The civil population was 3,375,470 compared
with 3,339,100 a year earlier. The corresponding estimates for metropolitan boroughs
are shown in Table 2 on p. 119, and the rates given in this annual report are calculated
upon these figures.
Table 1 shows the sex and age distribution of the population at the middle of
each year from 1921, as estimated by the Registrar-General. Though exact figures
are unavailable, it is clear that the number of the aged in the population of London
is increasing substantially; according to age-group estimates made by the RegistrarGeneral
at the end of 1947, 10.8 per cent. of the population of the county was then
over the age of 65.
Migration
Toward the end of the third decade of this century, there began an accelerated
movement of population from the centre of London, i.e., the administrative county,
to the growing urban areas in the outer ring of greater London. This was partly
due to a desire of the population for a dormitory in less built-up surroundings though
they continued to work in the central area, partly due to the drift of industry to
new factory sites on the fringe of the London area, and partly due to the active
steps taken by the Council to decant population from overcrowded slum areas to
new housing estates wherever these could be provided, in most instances outside the
county. Reference was made in the Report for 1946 to the possibility that this migration
has been selective in so far as the people who moved were younger and healthier
than the average and that the effect may be to increase the divergence in mortality
between the administrative county and the outer ring. The present effort to restrict
the size of the population by transferring Londoners to housing accommodation
outside the county must be borne in mind as a continuing factor.
Fertility

The live birth-rate was 16.7 per 1,000 total population, compared with 17.9 in
1948. The births allocated to London, i.e., those of mothers residing within the
county, are less than those actually registered as occurring in the county owing to
the fact that a number of mothers come to be confined in London hospitals and nursing
homes each year. This excess of registered over allocated births amounts to about
10 per cent., i.e., some 5,800 births in 1949. The corresponding figure in 1948 was
5,500.
The number of marriages registered was 35,726, or 21T persons married per
1,000 of the total population, compared with 22.7 in 1948.
The birth-rate in London tends to follow the same trend as for the country as a
whole, but at a lower level. The following diagram shows the course of the two rates
since 1931. The actual rates for London are given in Table 5.