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have been registered throughout the kingdom. The registered
births numbered 881, 464 males and 417 females.
A large percentage of the births occurred outside the district,
but this is due to the fact that there is no maternity hospital within
the district. Of the total births, 388 occurred in the district, 437
were notified from outside districts, and obviously 56 births did not
come to our knowledge. They are included in the Registrar General's
total; and as this total is 56 more than the number notified to
us, we are ignorant of their distribution ; we do not know where they
have occurred, and more important we do not know their address in
the borough.
The total number of registered births corresponds to an
annual birth-rate of 12.7 per 1,000 inhabitants. The birth-rate for
the whole of England and Wales last year was 14.8 per 1,000 ; for
the County Boroughs and large towns with a population of over
50,000 it was 14.9, and for the 143 smaller towns with populations
between 25,000 and 50,000 inhabitants, it was 15.0, and for the Administrative
County of London it was 13.6 per 1,000 inhabitants.
Until comparatively recently the birth rate excited no interest
amongst the general public. In most annual reports there
was just a small paragraph giving the total number of births and the
birth-rate. But when the British citizen hears that Parliament is
about to appoint a commission to investigate a subject which he has
hitherto considered without practical importance, he begins to consider
if there may be something in it worthy of his attention. The
public press gives great prominence to the subject, and most contradictory
statements and prophecies are made. A new word,
" demography " has been coined, and used extensively. We have
heard from Rome that " the demography problem is Italy's paramount
problem " The word is used to describe the statistical
methods to forecast future population trends.
Very many people cannot possibly understand how a population
can be declining which in fact is increasing by excess over
deaths. For instance, in Acton, where the birth-rate is much
lower than that of England and Wales, there were 87 more births
than deaths in 1936, and in the whole of England and Wales there
were about 109,861 births more than deaths. Attempts at enlightening
by complicated explanations of what birth-rates and
death-rates mean generally end in confusion, but for practical purposes
we may forget most of them and simply bear in mind the net