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9
COUNTY BOROUGH OF EAST HAM
Public Health Department,
Town Hall Annexe,
East Ham, E.6.
TO: THE WORSHIPFUL THE MAYOR,
THE ALDERMEN AND COUNCILLORS OF
THE COUNTY BOROUGH OF EAST HAM.
Mr. Mayor, Ladles and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to present the annual report for the years 1953 and
1954, for it is felt by so doing a more synoptic review will be obtained
than by fragmenting my observations in separate reports.
The Registrar General's estimate of the population at the 30th June,
1953, stood at 119,000, a decline of 1,000 during the year, and at 117,700
on 30th June, 1954, a further decline of 1,300.
In 1953 a fractional advance in the birth rate (to 12.8) was to be
seen still well below the general birth rate for England & Wales of 15.5.
In 1954 a further slight fall in the birth rate from 12.7 to 12.2
brings us to the lowest birth rate in the borough ever recorded, as study
of the records in my. possession, which date back to 1879, amply exemplifies.
Attention is drawn again to a significant rise in the Infant mortality
rate from 22.9 to 28t5 in 1953. Of the 46 infants who died In the first
year of life, 30 succumbed within one month of birth, 14 of them from
prematurity.
In 1954 the Infant mortality rate fell again to 19.6 and of the 30
deaths 27 died in the first month, of prematurity.
I believe the continuance of active work well Into the last trimester
of pregnancy, plays some part in the relatively high Incidence of prematurity
and should be combated by all possible means.
Little Is accomplished by a woman who by her toll in the last months
of carrying earns enough to acquire a chromium plated baby carriage, only
to find that her efforts and anxieties have precipitated the onset of
labour and her premature issue if alive, must weigh in the balance for
many wearying days before it can be determined that he may survive.
But for women who cease work between the twenty-eighth and the thirtysecond
week it is difficult to see why continuance of employment up to this
time could be a contributory cause of onset of premature labour.
However, it may well be that in these women who go to work to relieve
financial stress in the home, there is a resurgence of emotional stress
and domestic tension which was the besetting problem in the first instance
before earning capacity was lost by the advance of pregnancy. This may
well engender fresh psychological stresses and strains which can result
in premature labour.
I would mark also the change to be noted in the physique and physical
well-being of the child population of the borough. Twenty years ago,
hardly an infant welfare clinic session was completed without the presentation
by harassed mothers of babes with florid rickets, malnutrition, impetigo
or scabies. These conditions could be regarded as a barometric index to
ignorance and poverty. To-day it would be difficult to read the scale at
all, for with the enlightenment in infant nurture carried over the threshold