London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
View report page
Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Harrow 1957
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Harrow]
This page requires JavaScript
15
Road Accidents. Despite the efforts of those concerned with road
safety, the numbers of deaths due to motor vehicle accidents in England
and Wales rose from 4,117 in 1952 to 4,375, 4,589, 4,923 and reached
5,036 in 1956.
The local figures are too small to show any trend, those for the
corresponding years being 15, 10, 15, 16 and 15, and for 1957, 23. For
each of these years most of the fatalities were the result of accidents not
in the district. Four of the five persons killed in the district were elderly
pedestrians who were knocked down by motor vehicles.
The 383 accidents on the roads in the district last year were a fall
on the figure of 446 in the previous year. Of these, 268 occurred on the
main roads and 115 on other roads, monthly averages of 22 and 10.
Of those on the other-than-main roads, the figure was higher than the
average in the three months May, June and July and also in December.
Those on the main roads showed this excess from June to October and
again in December. While the proportion of the less seriously injured
on the two classes of road was much the same as the proportion of
accidents on the two sets of roads, there was a distinctly higher proportion
of serious accidents on the main roads.
The person who was injured in the accident was most commonly a
pedal cyclist (24-5 per cent.), next a motor cyclist (22-3 per cent.) and
then a pedestrian (19 per cent.). Car passengers comprised 11-5 per cent,
and car drivers 10 per cent.; pillion passengers and those on or about to
board a bus were each just over 3 per cent.
Accidents in the Home. The following table taken from the Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health for 1956 gives the age and sex distribution of the 6,908 persons who died as a result of a fatal domestic accident:—
| Male | Female | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-4 | 374 | 314 | 688 |
| 5-14 | 49 | 59 | 108 |
| 15-44 | 219 | 140 | 359 |
| 45-64 | 335 | 379 | 714 |
| 65-74 | 401 | 652 | 1,053 |
| 75+ | 1,138 | 2,848 | 3,986 |
| 2,516 | 4,392 | 6,908 |
More than four-fifths of these fatalities occurred at the two extremes
of life, nearly 60 per cent, of them affecting persons of 75 and over,
With the increase in the numbers of the elderly, the number of fatalities
amongst them will increase. On the other hand there has in recent
years been a gradual decline in the number of fatal accidents in children
fider five years of age.
Most of the local fatalities from accidents in the home were the
esult of falls of the elderly which caused the deaths of three men and
se!en women, a marked fall on the figures of the previous year.
, he next most frequent cause was coal gas poisoning amongst the
which caused the deaths of five men and of three women, more