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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 on the health of
the district for the year 1950.
This record, with its supporting statistical evidence, constitutes
yet another chapter of the generally favourable trend which the
health of the district has for so long experienced.
The birth rate was slightly less than in 1949, thus continuing
the fall from the post-war peak of 1946. The death rate, which for
the last fifty years has been consistently and significantly less than
that for the country as a whole, was again a comparatively low one at
7.8 per thousand population. In the early 1930's this rate was
materially assisted by the rapid increase in the population resulting
from the development of the St. Helier Estate, since this sponsored
migration into the district consisted mainly of the younger age groups
which have relatively low death rates. Although the average age of
the local population is still approximately three years less than that
for the" whole of Surrey, now that the district is for all practical
purposes fully developed, it is now tending to increase as the constitution
of the population slowly approximates to that of the country as
a whole. Apart from other influences, this factor in itself has the
effect of progressively increasing the death rate and will do so until
the disparity in the age constitution disappears. The death rate for
England and Wales was 11.6.
Infant mortality at 28.4 per thousand live births was much the
same as in the previous year and compares with a rate of 29.8 for
England and Wales. It is gratifying to be able to report once more
that there was no maternal mortality. This was the sixth year in
succession in which no death was attributable to childbirth.
A statistical variation which will be equally welcomed is a further
and substantial fall in the death rate from tuberculosis. Compared
with the previous year this mortality at 0.20 per thousand population
is nearly halved. This, considered in conjunction with the fact that
the number of new cases of tuberculosis increased by 13 and that
the number of known cases at the year end was 48 more than in 1949,
supports the view that the improved means for the early diagnosis
of this disease, including mass radiography, is enabling the curative
services to play a more effective role in the war against this scourge.
With the steadily increasing average age of survival it is to be
expected that a higher proportion of people will die as a result of senile
degenerative changes and of those diseases particularly associated
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