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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, 1952.
The vital statistics of the Borough, the only instrument
at our disposal for measuring the health of the population,
may be regarded as satisfactory. The birth rate during 1952
was 14.83 per 1,000 of the home population, compared with
15.00 in 1951 and with a 1952 rate for England and Wales of
15.3. After correction by the comparability factor supplied
by the Registrar General, the birth rate for Erith, in 1952, was
14.09.
The death rate for the Borough for 1952 was 10.85
compared with 11.6 in 1951 and the rate corrected for comparison
with other areas was 11.6 compared with 12.4 in 1951.
The infant mortality rate was 29.3 per 1,000 live births
compared with 34.8 in 1951, the rate for the country as a whole
during 1952 being 27.6. The lowest rate ever achieved in the
Borough was 20 in 1950 and it is wise to interpret these results
with restraint owing to the small numbers involved. Nevertheless,
there has been, allowing for inevitable fluctuations,
continuous improvement in the infant mortality rate over the
past 50 years. Erith was mentioned in the last three quarterly
returns of the Registrar General in 1911 as being one of the
towns which had low infant mortality rates but the rate for
Erith during that year was 69.93 and the rate for the 136 smaller
towns in general was 133.0 per 1,000. These comparisons
reveal the extent of improvement in living conditions during
the past half century and are in part, also, a reflection of the
impact of health services and health education.
The optimistic picture presented by these figures does not
take into account the fact that we have no morbidity statistics
relating specifically to the Borough, so that we do not know
how many people had, during the year, to attend hospital, or