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PREFACE
To the Chairman and Members of the
Carshalton Urban District Council.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to present my Annual Report for the year 1945.
During this period, peace at last brought an end to the terrible
wastage of war. These years of concentrated destruction have left us
poorer in many ways, not least in the means to maintain the health
and well-being of the community. Great gaps in the essential needs
of housing, food and clothing alone require to be filled and call for
the same sense of urgency which characterised our efforts during
the period of hostilities. The degree of success achieved in this programme
of rebuilding will in no small measure determine the standard
of public health in the years that lie immediately ahead. As the
contents of this report indicate, the health of Carshalton came through
the war with great credit, but who shall say to what fine limits the
margin of safety was reduced, and who could with confidence assert
how much longer it could withstand the strain to which war has
subjected it. The fact that in 1945 the health of the district was in
many ways the best yet recorded, and that this should have been
achieved after a long and devastating war, is the most hopeful augury
for the future if the many problems that await our attention are
tackled with energy and resolution.
Vital statistics are the yard sticks for the measurement of public
health, and uninteresting as they may be to most, it is only by an
examination of such figures that we can assess progress. So many
of these indices are for- 1945 the most favourable yet in our local
experience that one is tempted to use the hackneyed phrase " a record
year." Certainly there is considerable justification for it.
The birth rate at 15.0 per 1,000, though not so high as in 1944,
is markedly above that for the five years prior to that year. The
crude death rate is again a very favourable one, lower than in the
year before, and considerably less than for England and Wales. The
rate of natural increase as expressed by the difference between the
birth and death rates still provides a comfortable margin, but if it is
to be maintained a higher birth rate is necessary in the future, as
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