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73
The Health of London in 1889.
"The Registrar-General, in his last Annual Summary,
reported that the death rate in Registration London in 1888
was 18.5 per 1,000, being ' far the lowest death-rate as yet
recorded in London,' the next lowest being 19.8, 19.9, and
19.6 in the three immediately preceding years, 1885-86-87,
previously to which the London death-rate had never fallen
below 20 per 1,000. The death-rate in 1889, moreover,
again fell, and was considerably below the low rate in 1888.
The mean annual death-rate in London in the fifty-two
weeks of last year did not exceed 17.5 per 1,000, and was
1 per 1,000 below the rate in 1888, and far lower than the
rate recorded in London in any year since Civil Registration
first afforded the means for calculating trustworthy rates.
" The annual number of births in London has, on the
whole, remained stationary since 1881, notwithstanding an
estimated increase of about half a million in the population
since that year, suggesting either that the population has
not increased, or that the birth-rate has declined.
"On the whole, no sufficient reason can be urged for
doubting that the Metropolitan death-rate in 1889 was
unprecedentedly low, compared not only with the death-rates
in London in past years, but with the rates of any of the
other large cities of the world.
" The deaths registered in the fifty-two weeks of last
year were 75,683, and actually fewer than in any year since
1870, when the population of the Metropolitan area was
less by about a million than it is believed to be now.
" The deaths from the principal zymotic diseases were last
year 9,709, more than 1,000 fewer than in any previous
year on record back to 1870, and equal to a death-rate of