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10
Births
The total number of live births registered during the year was 2,721
(1,381 male and 1,340 female). Of these 107 were illegitimate, being a
percentage of total births of 3.9. The number of live births registered
in each of the years from 1944 onwards was 3,473, 3,068, 3,934, 3,828,
3,226, 3,083, 2,848, 2,895, 2,895, and 2,855.
759 births occurred in the district (746 live, 13 stillbirths). Of
this number 133 were to residents of other districts. 1,949 (1,901 live
and 48 still) birth notifications were transferred from other districts,
being mostly of births occurring to Harrow mothers in hospitals in
Middlesex or in London.
The birth rate was 12.5. The local comparability factor for births
is 1.02, the corrected birth rate was therefore 12.7; that for the country as
a whole was 15.5.
Deaths
1,302 persons died in this district in 1953. This figure includes those
of members of the Armed Forces stationed here. Of these, 138 were
persons who were not resident in the area. 37 deaths took place in the
various hospitals and 35 in private nursing homes.
Of the 762 deaths of the local residents which occurred outside the
district, most took place in institutions, 326 being at the Edgware General
Hospital. 160 deaths took place in hospitals just outside the district,
including four in nearby isolation hospitals, and 177 in various London
hospitals.
The Registrar General arranges that the information about those
who have died outside the district in which they normally reside is transferred
to the Health Office of those districts, and these numbers are added
to the deaths of those districts, corresponding reductions being made from
the deaths allocated to any districts in respect of those who died in those
districts, but normally reside elsewhere. According to this practice,
whereas the death of a person, say in the Harrow Hospital, which is
classed as a hospital for acute illness, is passed to the district in which
the person normally lived, deaths occurring amongst those at Roxbourne
Hospital are counted locally. So far as concerns those who have lived
in Harrow before their admission, this makes no difference ; but many of
the inmates of Roxbourne Hospital were resident in some other district
and their deaths swell the local figures. Of the 56 who died in 1952 at
Roxbourne Hospital, nearly one-half had been ordinarily resident not in
this district. It seems that the question has been looked into and the
criterion for determining the amount of acute cases which could cause an
otherwise chronic hospital to be treated as a general hospital as regards
transferability of deaths has been selected as being the ratio of the numbers
of deaths and discharges to the average daily bed occupation being two
or more in each of the two most recent years for which figures are available.
The following is the Registrar-General's abridged list of causes of
death in this district:—