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6
Under these circumstances, estimates of local populations
based on the census returns were clearly inadmissable, and it
became necessary to search for a substitute. Fortunately this was
ready to hand in the shape of the National Register, which referred
to a date only six weeks removed from that for which estimates
were required, viz., the middle of the year 1915. No doubt this
does not form a perfect record as it is known that a number of
persons escaped registration. From investigations however, which
have been made in another connection, it appears that the defects
in the register taken as a whole are not on such a scale as to affect
seriously the estimates of population based upon it. By the n ethod
described below it was possible to derive from these returns estimates
of the civil population only of each administrative area on
August 15th. No attempt has been made to increase these by
allowance for members of the fighting forces because, apart altogether
from the difficulty of ascertaining the average military
population of each district during the year, experience has shown
that under present circumstances only civilian deaths can be tabulated
for local areas. If military deaths were to be included, they
would have either to be debited to the area in which they occurred,
a course which would render the death-rates of districts containing
military hospitals meaningless, or to the area of residence. An
attempt to pursue the latter course has had to be abandoned
owing to military authorities having been unable to furnish to the
registrars the necessary information. It has been found necessary
therefore to limit the tabulation of deaths by local areas to deaths of
civilians, and under these circumstances the civilian population is
obviously the proper one to use for the calculation of death-rates.
An additional advantage in the use of National Register
populations is that these consist of habitual residents in each locality
and not merely of the persons who happened to be present therein
on a certain date. The deaths tabulated from the year 1911
onwards are also of those of habitual residents only, and therefore
the use hitherto of populations which in certain cases included very
large institutional elements chiefly composed of non-residents
introduced in these cases serious errors into the rates calculated
from them, as pointed out in the Registrar General's Annual