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Assistant Medical Officer for Maternity and Child Welfare, who
is responsible for the administration of this section.
DISTRIBUTION OF ALL BIRTHS.
In an area such as West Ham, surrounded as it is by other
urban areas, it is inevitable that many of the births which take
place in homes and hospitals are to mothers whose ordinary place
of residence is outside the area of the County Borough. The
distribution of all the births—whether to West Ham residents or
not—which occurred in the area during 1937 are given in Table
1. It should be noted that the figures relate to the number of
children born—both live and still births—and not to the number
of confinements.
This table brings out the fact that, of the 2,383 births
which occurred in private houses, 99.3 per cent, related to mothers
ordinarily resident in West Ham. Of the births which occurred
in the hospitals belonging to the local authority, 48.4 percent.
were to mothers residing in West Ham, 28.4 per cent, to mothers
residing in East Ham, and 23.1 per cent, to mothers resident in
the County of Essex. The corresponding figures for voluntary
institutions are: West Ham residents, 50.9 per cent.; East Ham
residents, 19.2 per cent.; Essex County residents, 28.7 per cent.
The relative proportion of West Ham residents who are confined
in the Council's hospitals is therefore approximately the same as
the proportion confined in voluntary hospitals. Of the patients
resident outside the Borough area, the proportion resident in East
Ham is higher in the case of the municipal hospitals than in the
case of the voluntary hospitals. Taking the figures in the last
line of this table, it is seen that of the 5,528 births which took
place in the area of the County Borough, 71.3 per cent, were to
mothers ordinarily resident in the West Ham area, 12.6 per cent,
to East Ham women, and 15.5 per cent, to women resident in the
County of Essex.
MATERNITY SERVICE.
Midwives. The total number of midwives on the register
on 31st December, 1936, was 54. During 1937 the number of
midwives who gave notice of their intention to practise was 103.
The total number of midwives on the register on 31st December,
1937, was 60. The apparent discrepancy between the figures 103
and 60 is accounted for by the fact that a certain number of mid-
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