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9
Deaths and Death Rates.
The total number of deaths registered during the year was 1818.
This figure is inclusive of persons who, though usually resident in the Borough,
died in institutions, etc., outside, but exclusive of those, who, though they died in St.
Marylebone, were ordinarily resident in other districts.
Arrangements for transferring these deaths are made by the Registrar-General
who receives a note of all deaths considered to belong to some other district and sends
on such deaths as should rightly be included in the returns of the Borough. Deaths
of persons usually resident outside England and Wales are not so treated, and must be
included in the returns of the district in which they occur.
The figure 1818 includes 51 such deaths being mainly of persons who have come
to the hospitals and nursing homes, of which there are so many, in the Borough.
The death rate calculated with the figures so obtained (1818) and the estimated
population to the middle of 1911 and corrected for age and sex distribution by
multiplying by the Registrar-General's factor 1.0652, works out at 16.3 per 1,000.
As has been explained in previous reports, the necessity for this " correction "
results from the fact that differences in death rates in various areas are not entirely
dependent upon the sanitary conditions existing in these areas, but also on the
constitution (age and sex) of the population. A population consisting of aged persons
would show more deaths than one consisting entirely of young and vigorous adults: a
population made up of a large number of males and a small number of females has
more deaths and a higher death rate than one in which the females outnumber the males.
The death rates of such populations are not comparable the one with the other nor with
those of populations differently constituted. The Registrar-General's factors do away
with all difficulty in comparing death rates, and all which have been corrected by his
method may be safely examined side by side.
The number of deaths in 1910 was 1607, less by 211 than the number for 1911;
the death rate for 1910 was 13.3 as against 16.3 for the year under review.
For the increase in the total number of deaths the alteration making compulsory
the inclusion of the 51 " outside" deaths referred to above is to some extent responsible ;
the chief factor, however, as will be shown when the figures are more closely analysed
in subsequent pages, is an increase in the number of deaths from certain causes, more
especially in the earlier and later age groups.
Measles, for example, which caused 27 deaths in 1910, was responsible for no
fewer than 64 in 1911; phthisis (consumption) which gave 133 deaths in the previous
year, in 1911 gave 172 ; and so with diarrhcea and enteritis, which in 1911 caused
92 deaths, exactly twice as many as in 1910. As to age, whereas in the age group
65 and upwards in 1910, 482 deaths were registered, in 1911 the number was 561.
The increase in the death rate per 1,000 of population, from 13.3 to 16.3 is partly
due to the increase in the number of deaths, but largely also to the fact that the
the population with which we are dealing is smaller, 117,844, as against 125,195.