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13
5. DEATHS.
(a) General.—There were 328 deaths registered in Barking in 1931. Of these 7
were deaths of non-residents. Barking residents to the number of 215 died elsewhere
during the year. Including the latter and excluding the deaths of visitors,
the net number of deaths was as follows:—
Males. Females. Total.
278 258 536
The death rate for 1931 was 10.3 per 1,000, compared with 9.7 in 1930, 12.3
for England and Wales, 12.3 for the hundred and seven Great Towns, 11.8 for the
hundred and fifty-nine Smaller Towns, and 12.4 for London.
In the year 1926, the Government of the day set to work and brought in a Bill
to deal with the registration of deaths.
The Bill was passed and the Act conferred certain powers on Coroners. Thus
Coroners may now order a post-mortem to be carried out and a report to be made
to them without of necessity, as heretofore, holding an open inquest on such a case.
In accordance with the Act, the form of certification of death has been altered
and the list of approved diagnoses which it is permissible to use on death certificates
has been brought more up to date and provision was supposed to have been made
for such certification to be secret.
It is obvious that unless certification is secret the hands of the certifying doctor
are tied. He can hardly be expected to write on a piece of paper that an affectionate
husband and devoted father actually died from syphilis or some similar complaint,
and there are other ways in which practitioners are likely to find themselves in
similar difficulties which their own humanity and delicacy constrain them to evade
in one way or another.
The curious thing is that interests somewhere have brought the whole purpose
of this secrecy to no avail, because whereas under the new Act the people themselves
are only officially given a note to the registrar, assuring the registrar that a detailed
certificate is on the way, these same relatives can—and at the instigation 6f some
business companies often do—go to the registrar and for a small sum of money
obtain a copy of the detailed certificate, which, when the Bill was before Parliament,
was originally intended to be secret.
Until these certifications of death are really secret the actual value of statistics
prepared from them is doubtful from any public health standpoint.