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9
PREFACE.
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of
the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich.
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
In presenting my Fifteenth Annual Report (which is the
Twenty-fourth Annual Report on the Health of Plumstead),
I have to state with regret that the steady fall in the deathrate
which characterised successive years previous to the War
was not maintained in 1915. It is satisfactory, however, to
note that the rise in the death-rate last year was less than in
London as a whole. This is as it should be, considering the
great increase the population has received from young
munition workers, who are housed in new buildings erected
by the Government, and whose death-rate should be, and
probably is, very low.
War conditions have influenced the public health in
different ways. Miss Middlebrooke, in her interesting comments
on her work, describes one way in which the improved
labour conditions in Woolwich, due to the War, have very
favourably influenced the care of the children in the homes
of the poorer classes; but on the whole it must be admitted
that, in spite of abundance of money and food, war conditions
have been unfavourable to health. The effect of war conditions
on the death-rate is dealt with in paragraph 14.