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8
The death-rate from all causes, which, with the increasing age of the population,
had been slowly rising before the war, again rose sharply in 1940. This increase was
partly due to the war-time statistical basis as explained above, but the heavy toll of
air raids was an important contributory factor. Between 1944 and 1950 there was,
however, a decline in trend. The rate of 12.0 in 1952 is somewhat lower than that of the
previous year; 1951 was a year in which there was a severe influenza outbreak,
sufficient to raise the annual death-rate from 11.3 per thousand of 1950, to 12.6 per
thousand. In 1952 the general rate would have been back to the 1950 level but for the
enormous mortality associated with the fog period of December which, in a space of a
week, contributed an extra .5 per thousand to the year's rate. A detailed statistical
account of this catastrophe will be found on page 151, but it should be noted here that
its effects on the year's specific death-rate were as profound as on the general rate, and
more particularly in the bronchitic and heart disease group and, of course, the
degenerative group.
Bronchitis
and heart
disease
The death-rate for the bronchitic and heart disease group which was 4.64 in 1952
compared with 5.01 in 1951 has followed a similar trend to that of the rate for 'all
causes' of which it forms a large part. Figures for the component diseases are shown
in Table 3 (page 174).
Cerebral
hšmorrhage
The death-rate from vascular lesions of the nervous systems in 1952 was 1.27 per
1,000, compared with 1.22 in 1951. The average for 1941-45 was 1.15, but a large
proportion of the apparent reduction in the interval was due to the increase in the civil
population upon demobilisation, a purely ' statistical' effect.
Nephritis
For nephritis the death-rate in 1952 amounted to 0.11 per 1,000, compared with
0.12 in 1951, and an average of 0.36 over the years 1931-40.
Degenerative
diseases
If, as an indication of mortality from degenerative diseases, heart disease, other
circulatory diseases, cerebral vascular lesions, nephritis and bronchitis are combined,
the following trend becomes apparent:

† Based on the dual classification of deaths for England and Wales, 1939.
The second cause affecting the statistics was the outbreak of war. The young and healthy section of the population
was, from September, 1939, excluded from the mortality statistics, which henceforth related only to civilians. This
selective factor was bound to inflate the death-rates, since the population in respect of which they were calculated was
now on the average older and less healthy.
To reduce the confusing effect of the large scale reclassification of deaths, heart diseases and bronchitis have been
combined.