London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

View report page

Leyton 1937

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Leyton]

This page requires JavaScript

118
Analysis of Ante-Natal Records for a Five-year Period.
Report by Dr. Hilda Menzies.
This analysis was undertaken primarily to discover the proportion
of pregnancies occurring in the different age groups in
women who attended the municipal ante-natal clinics in the
Borough of Leyton throughout a five-year period. As the result
of the pregnancy was recorded in each case, the abnormalities were
grouped similarly according to the age of the patient and the
number of the pregnancy.
The records numbered 2,088, of which the distribution according
to previous fertility is shown in Table I. When the order of
birth was tabulated, miscarriages and abortions were included as
previous pregnancies.

TABLE I.

No. of Pregnancy.No. of Cases.Percentage of Total 2,088.
177837.2
246722.3
324211.6
41919.1
51155.5
6964.6
7-141999.5
2,088100.0

I had not considered that these percentages could be taken as
representative of the fertility of Leyton women in general, as it
might be argued that figures taken from clinic attendances were
weighted with primiparse. While I have been engaged on this
analysis, information regarding the previous fertility of child-bearing
women in certain areas has been published in the Ministry of
Health " Report on an Investigation into Maternal Mortality."
Thus in Manchester in 1934 the percentage of primiparous live
births was 36.6. The birth-rate for that year in Manchester was
15.3, while the Leyton birth-rate was 11.78. One would therefore
expect the proportion of primiparse in Leyton to be higher than
in Manchester, so that the percentage of 37.2 in this series may be
representative of Leyton.