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5
METROPOLITAN BOROUGH OF CHELSEA
Public Health Department,
Town Hall,
King's Road,
CHELSEA, S.W.3.
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors
of the Metropolitan Borough of Chelsea,,
Your Worship, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to submit my second annual report on the health
of the Metropolitan Borough of Chelsea for the year ending 31st
December, 1951. The report has been prepared in accordance with the
desires of the Minister of Health as expressed in Circular 42/1951,
dated 10th December, 1951.
In various sections of the report a review of the local progress
made in that particular field of Public Health during the past 50 years
is undertaken. Where appropriate, graphs have been prepared to
illustrate the position.
The Registrar-General's estimate of the population as at mid-1951
is 52,430, as compared with 52,490 in 1950; these figures, however,
include military personnel stationed in the Borough. Last year they
were estimated to number 150 and in the absence of any evidence to the
contrary it can only be assumed that the civilian population has decreased
by sixty.
The number of Live Births recorded was 819, a decrease of ten
compared with 1950. Of this total 420 were Males and 399 Females,
deficiences of 6 and 4 respectively compared with the preceding year.
The birth rate is 15.6 - a decline of 0.2.
There was a decrease in the number of Still Births which totalled
20 (Males 12:Females 8) as compared with 24 (Males 12 : Females 12) last
year. The respective rates are 23.8 and 28 .1.
The death rate advanced to 13.1 being 0.9 above the figures
attained in 1950 (12.2)• The average for the ten years 1930 - 1939 was
13.5. If it were possible for the populations of all areas to be
similarly constituted as regard the proportions of their sex and age
components, their crude death rates (deaths per 1,000 of population)
could be accepted as valid comparative measures of the mortalities
experienced by the populations. In practice, however, populations are
not so constituted, and the Registrar-General has, therefore, employed a
factor known as the "Area Comparability Factor" for each district. This
provide® for an adjustment of the age and sex composition of a particular
area to that of England and Wales as a whole, so that a statistical basis