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

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City of London 1852

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for London, City of ]

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NOTE TO TABLE, No. I.
In calculating the Death-Rates given in the last lines of this
Table, I have proceeded as follows:—
First, I have counted all Workhouse- Population and Workhouse-Deaths
as forming part of the aggregate population and
aggregate mortality of that Union to which the particular
Workhouse legally belongs.
Next, I have distributed among the several sub-districts the
population and the mortality of their Union Workhouses, in
the ratio of the general sub-district population; so as to prevent
the high Workhouse-Mortality from telling unjustly against
that sub-district in which the Workhouse happens to have
been erected.
Thus, for instance, the East London Union has its male
Workhouse placed in the territory of the West London Union;
but I have reckoned it as belonging to the East London Union,
in respect both of its population and its deaths. Similarly, the
City of London Union has its Workhouse situate at Bow; but,
not the less, I have considered its 794 inmates and 526 deaths
as belonging to the population and the mortality of our
central Union.
Thus again for the sub-district death-rates—for instance,
in the two sub-districts of the East London Union: reckoning
the Workhouse-Population not as exclusively due either to
Cripplegate or to St. Botolph, but as furnished by these subdistricts
jointly, in the ratio of their populations, I have distributed
576 between them in the proportion 23435: 20582.
The Workhouse-Deaths of the period (802) have been similarly
distributed; and the rates, given in the last line of the table, are
finally deduced from a comparison of these sums, viz:—
23435 + 306.66 : 2458 + 426.991 1000 : 121.515 which,
divided by 5 (to show an annual, instead of a quinquennial,
result) gives 24.303 as the annual death-rate for St. Botolph;
and, in like manner, 20582 + 269.33 : 2483 + 375.008 gives
137.065 as the quinquennial, and 27.41 as the annual deathrate
per thousand for the sub-district of Cripplegate.
Hospital Deaths have been distributed, as far as possible,
according to the previous residence of the patients. Thus the
north sub-district of the West London Union, in which St. Bartholomew's
Hospital is situated, is made to retain only its just
proportion of deaths. On the same principle I have reckoned to
the death-lists of other sub-districts those cases in which I
could ascertain that the residents of such sub-districts had gone
to die either in St. Bartholomew's, or in other Metropolitan
Hospitals.