View report page

2
The population being 4,800, the death rate for 1902 stood at
9.7 per 1,000, higher than in 1901, when it was 8.5 per 1,000,
but still a good death rale considering the proximity to London
and the class of population. Taking an average for the last
seven years our death rate is below 10 per 1,000 for the District,
which may be considered quite satisfactory.
Of these 47 deaths, eight were attributed to some disease
of the heart, three to accidents, three to bronchitis, three to
senility, three to meningitis, two to influenza, two to scarlatina,
two to phthisis, two to gastro enteritis, two to alcoholism, one
to small pox, one to pneumonia, one to diphtheria, one to
septicoemia, one to melancholia, only one to cancer, one to
child-bearing, being the fourth that has occurred in the District
during the last eighteen years.
The Registrar of Births has forwarded to me a list of 117
births during 1902, 61 boys, 56 girls. This is about the
average of boys and girls, and makes a birth rate for the
District of 24.4. a rate which if not actually low might reasonably
be somewhat higher. Too often, I fear, a low birth rate
is regarded by many with approval, if not with considerable
satisfaction. It would be well sometimes if our attention was
drawn to the other view of the question, for, quite apart from
the fact that married people, who intentionally have only one
or two children (frequently none) may not fulfil their whole
duty to the great Empire to which we are all proud to belong,
there is the undoubted fact that those who have fewer children
than nature intended them to have (and the normal number is
five or six) often diminish their families at the expense of their
own good health. I know, of course, that the reverse frequently
obtains, and that prevention may in certain cases be necessary
and desirable, but the danger is that the practice will become
more recognised as legitimate, and be more universally adopted
though it be an offence against the laws of nature, and
frequently wrong morally and hygienically. One notices,