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4
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors
of the Borough of Erith
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to present my Annual Report for the
year 1951.
The vital statistics of the Borough are, broadly,
satisfactory and present a number of interesting features. The
birth rate during 1951 was 15.00 per thousand of the home
population compared with 14.96 per thousand in 1950, 17.00
in 1949, 18.96 in 1948, 22.6 in 1947, 22.30 in 1946, 19.13 in
1945 and 24.3 in 1944. It will be seen that the increase in the
birth rate towards the end of the war has not been maintained
and the birth rate in fact shows a continued rate of decline
which, in general, follows the trend in the birth rate for the
country as a whole, although the birth rate for Erith is not
appreciably lower than the national rate (15.5). There is a
number of possible explanations. Firstly, the housing
position is a major deterrent to young married people to
start a family. Added to this there is the high cost of living,
including the high cost of setting up a home.
The birth rate for the Borough corrected by the use of
the Registrar General's comparability factor (0.95) was 14.25.
Bearing in mind the low death rate which we enjoy
nowadays and the fact that the level of the population is being
maintained only by the fertility of the past, two things are
obvious ; firstly that the number of old people must increase
and secondly (since we are all mortal) the death rate must be
expected to rise and the population stabilised at a lower level
based on present day fertility factors.
The death rate for the Borough, during 1951 was 11.6
compared with 10.2 for 1950, or, after correction by means of
the comparability factor for deaths (1.07), 12.4 compared with
a corrected death rate of 11.0 for 1950. The death rate for
the country as a whole was 12.5.
The infant mortality rate for 1951, at 34.8 per thousand
live births, was considerably higher than the record low rate
for 1950, namely, 20.0. The number of babies who died in
the first year of life per thousand live births during 1951 was
24 compared with 14 in 1950. The percentage of children
dying during the first month of life (neo-natal deaths) was