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2
In presenting the Vital Statistics for the first quarter of
the year, I desire to call attention to certain changes which
have necessarily followed upon the redistribution of the wards.
The population estimates upon which the present ward rates
are based are less reliable than the corresponding data relating
to the old wards. There is no census datum from which to
calculate the new ward populations, and, although in a district
like Willesden, with a rapidly growing, and not less rapidly
changing population, an interval of nine years from the census
seriously militates against the accuracy of the estimate, the
census datum nevertheless affords a valuable basis of calculation
which is lacking in the figures taken to represent the
population of the present wards. Moreover, the age and sex
distribution of the population of the wards existing at the
census was then ascertained and has been estimated to have
retained its character in the respective wards till the close of
last year. No such knowledge of the age and sex distribution
of the population in the existing wards is available and no data
exist on which to base an estimate of this age and sex distribution.
It is not possible, therefore, to give the corrections for
age and sex distribution, which have hitherto been applied to
the death rates of the wards. For the same reason it is not
possible to give the incidence rates of Scarlet Fever and
Diphtheria, upon persons under fifteen years of age (the most
useful figure for the purpose of comparison of infectious disease
incidence). The standard death rates for the new wards
cannot be calculated until the next census figures are available.
The Infantile Mortality rate which for the quarter is calculated