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composition, with a result that the death rate for the district was low. To
offset the effects on such rates as are brought about by changes in the
age and sex distribution of the population, the Registrar General compiles
a figure which when multiplied by the ordinary rate gives the corrected
rate, that is, the one that would have occurred had the age and sex composition
of the population been normal. The corrected death rate worked
out in this way is still appreciably below that of the country as a whole.
As the population becomes of more normal age distribution, the death
rate can be expected to rise. In fact, if there were no movement of the
population the rate would rise perhaps to above that of the country as a
whole, when in time the excess population, at one time an excess of young
adults, passes as a wave through the age groups to become in time an
excess of the older age groups.
There was a sharp rise in the number of deaths in the war years.
That, coupled with the fact that the younger members of the population
were away from home and perhaps too because of movements into the
district of numbers of elderly persons, caused the death rates for these
years to be high. Although the numbers of deaths each year since the war
have been higher because of the increase in the size of the population,
the death rate has fallen, though these rates are now that much higher
each year than they were in the years before the war.
The fall in the infant mortality rate is often referred to as one of the
dramas of preventive medicine. From a figure of 150 at the turn of the
century (a figure which means that out of every six babies born one died
before reaching the age of one year) the fall has been most marked.
About 1920 a rate of 40 was referred to as the irreducible minimum. The
rate of 47 in 1944 then was quite satisfactory. Lower figures were recorded,
though, in some of the years before the war. The earlier of the war years
saw a very sharp and disturbing rise. For the latter years of the war,
though, the rate fell to figures in the thirties. These were succeeded
for some years by figures in the twenties, apart from the extraordinary
figure of 13.6 in 1950. At the same time there has been a gratifying
fall in the stillbirth rate which for many of the years since the war has
been only just over 20 per thousand total births.
In the nineteen-thirties the maternal mortality rate for the country
as a whole remained constantly about four per thousand births. Since
the war this rate has just as constantly been about one per thousand,
probably the result of chemotherapy. Local figures, though somewhat
erratic, followed the same trend.
Deaths from cancer for over this period increased more than proportionately
to the increase in population. This can be expected because
of the general ageing of the population with more reaching the ages at
which the disease develops.
The figures for suicide have not increased. There was a striking fall
during the war years and in general to-day's figures are much the same
as those in the earlier years of this period in spite of the fact that the
population is now about 50 per cent, greater than it was for most of those
years.