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TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL REPORT
OF THE
MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH,
BEING FOR THE YEAR 1878.
To the Vestry of the Parish of St. Mary Abbotts, Kensington.
Gentlemen,
The year 1878 occupies an unfavorable position in respect of
the vital statistics of our parish, especially as compared with 1877.
The latter year was remarkable for a very low death-rate, viz., 17.3
per 1,000 persons living, or 2.2 per 1,000 below the decennial average
(19.5). The death-rate of 1878, 20.3 per 1,000 in an estimated population
of 153,600, was 0.8 above the average, and 3.0 per 1,000
above the rate in 1877. The deaths registered in the parish, and at the
hospitals of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, in 1877, were only
2,624, being 272 fewer than the number in 1876 (2,896); but in 1878
the deaths were 3,120, or 226 more than in 1876, and 496 more than
in 1877. These totals include in each case the deaths of nonparishioners
at the Hospital at Brompton for Consumption and Diseases
of the Chest, which are reckoned in our vital statistics by way of
compensation for the unknown number of deaths of parishioners at
hospitals and other places beyond the limits of the parish.
The Metropolitan death-rate, which in 1877 was 21.9per 1,000,
and 4.6 per 1,000 above the rate in Kensington, rose to 23.5 in 1878,
being 3.2 per 1,000 only above that of Kensington. As the decennial
death-rate in the Metropolis was 3.6 per 1,000 above that of Kensington,
it would appear at first sight that the state of the public health of
our parish, as guaged by the death-rate, was relatively worse last year
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