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34
Adopting, as I have done, a very conservative estimate of the
population increase, and including these deaths of persons nonresident
in the district, the uncorrected death-rate works out at
7.4 per 1,000. Ten years ago it was 12.1.
Great pains have been taken, in estimating the corrected deathrate,
to ascertain from the authorities of the Richmond Hospital,
the Richmond Infirmary and Brookwood Asylum, and from the
Medical Officers of Health of the London Boroughs, a complete
record of persons belonging to this district who died elsewhere
during 1908.
Even so, the corrected death-rate only amounts to 8 6, and this
figure is again subject to legitimate deduction on account of the
deaths of non-residents just alluded to.
Analysis of Tables I. and IV. shows, when these tables are
compared with those of past years, that the betterment of the deathrate
is mainly due to
(1) reduction of the zymotic death-rate.
(2) reduction of the infantile death-rate.
With regard to this latter rate it will be seen that the deaths
of children under one year were, in 1908, 63, the same number as
in 1907, and the same number as has been the average for the
years 1898 to 1907.
The births in 1908 and 1907 were, however, 676 and 684
respectively, the average births for the years 1898-1907 being only
519.
The outstanding fact is, that for 1908 and 1907 the infantile
death-rate has been 93 and 92 per 1,000 births, while in 1898 it
was 182 per 1,000, and for the decennium 1898-1907 so high as 125.
It may be fairly claimed therefore that during the past few
years there has been a steady improvement in our public health,
evinced by