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that a rate of 10 per 1,000 could be achieved. (It is interesting
to recall that, in 1902, the birth rate of the Bexley
Urban District was 28.4 per 1,000 and the infant mortality
rate was 99.1 per 1,000 live births).
The death rate for the Borough for 1952 was 9.14 per
1,000 of the whole population compared with 9.6 per 1,000
in 1951. After correction by the comparability factor for
deaths, the rate was 10.78 compared with the uncorrected
death rate for England and Wales for 1952, namely 11.3 per
1,000. Cancer is second after diseases of the heart and
blood vessels among the chief causes of death. One death
occurred in the Borough in 1952 as the result of childbirth
giving a maternal mortality rate of 0.93 per 1,000 live and
still-births compared with a rate of nought in 1951.
The incidence of infectious disease was again low with
the exception of measles which reached epidemic proportions
in November, 1952. The disease was, on the whole,
mild and there were no deaths. As there had been a
measles epidemic in 1951, the biennial periodicity normally
expected in urban communities was not experienced. The
disease did not occur uniformly over the whole Borough
but was patchy in its incidence and it was possible, in some
cases, to trace its progression from one Ward to another
and then to the areas of contiguous authorities. During the
week ending 15th November, 1952, there were 153 cases
notified in Bexley while there were no cases notified at all
in the adjacent Borough of Erith. This latter district had
had a small outbreak of measles in July, 1952, and measles
did not recur until March, 1953. It is curious that measles,
sometimes, appears to stop along a local government
boundary this, no doubt, being bound up with the location
of the schools attended by the children. Practically all
Bexley children attend schools in the Borough and, although
there is a small interchange of school children at the
boundary with Erith and Sidcup the numbers are, probably,
too small to influence the epidemiological position. The
schools, therefore, appear to be the primary focus of measles
infection in the Borough and the preschool children
probably are infected by their brothers and sisters of school
age. This is supported by the fact that the general standard
of housing in the Borough, with its almost total lack of
tenement dwellings, does not favour the wide dissemination
of measles by spread among the under fives.
On the 7th October, 1952, a public enquiry was held in
the Borough in connection with the application of the
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