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WALTHAMSTOW
VITAL STATISTICS 1881/1958
The following table shows the vast improvement in the public health of
Walthamstow since 1881, i.e., over a period of seventy eight years. The averages
given are for the five year periods stated except for the three year average for
the years 1956/ 1958.
Information available for the earlier years is somewhat sketchy and there
is considerable discrepancy between the various estimates of population in the
inter-censal years.
The general picture up to the end of the Nineteenth Century is that of a
rapidly growing London suburb following from the provision of railway facilities
with Central London.
There were thousands of artisan dwellings along unmade roads without any
street cleansing, with overcrowding poverty and lack of the most elementary
knowledge of hygiene, especially in regard to the nurture of infant life, a high
birth rate and a high infant mortality rate.
Although there were separate sewerage systems for surface water and sewage,
the former became inadequate in heavy storms and the latter were badly constructed
and ventilated. There was only intermittent refuse collection.
Water was supplied by a private undertaking up to 1903. i.e. the East London
Water Company. The supply was intermittent, inadequate and dirty with little or
no redress on complaint. Most houses had water closets, but drinking water was
often obtained from the same storage tank as the closet.
Epidemics of communicable diseases occurred regularly, notably diphtheria,
scarlet fever and typhoid with summer diarrhoea or gastro enteritis as a most
fatal disease for young babies. Measles and whooping cough were also epidemic
and often fatal, but not notifiable.
Until 1901 when the District Isolation Hospital, i.e. Chingford Sanatorium"
became available, there were no isolation hospital facilities. Mortality rates
were high and modern methods of prevention diagnosis and treatment were unknown.
Reviewing the various headings of the table in order, the natural" increase
in population i.e. the excess of births over deaths diminished from a maximum
of 2,200 in 1901/5 to only 108 in 1956/8. and at this rate there will soon be an
excess of deaths. There has been an almost steady decline in birth and death
rates, and after 1900 in the infant mortality rate to a new low record of only
15.4 in 1958. The infant mortality rate of 123 3 when applied to the 3442 infant
deaths in 1901/5 represents an annual total of 424 deaths. If the 1956/58 average
infant mortality nate were applied to the 1901/05 period, there would only have
been 67 deaths in all.
With regard to notifications and deaths from infectious disease, diphtheria
has now almost disappeared, and therein lies the danger of complacency in
neglecting immunisation. The last death from diphtheria was in 1946 and the last
confirmed case in 1950.