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PREFACE.
To the Chairman and Members of the
Merton and Morden Urban District Council.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to present my Report for the year 1945.
The Registrar General has given the population for the
year 1945 as 66,050 as compared with 62,760 last year. The
total number of births you will see has dropped slightly from
1,157 to 1,053 this year. The comparative statistics for our
population continues to be highly favourable. Our infant
mortality is 34 per 1,000 live births. Our maternal mortality
rate nil and our death rate 9.1 per 1,000 of the population.
I am going to suggest that perusal of this Report is
prefaced by examination of Table II on page 14. There in
tabular form is a kaleidoscope picture of Merton and Morden
from its infancy to its present maturity. The scene opens in
the year 1913, the last year before our world embarked on the
series of international conflicts from which even at this
moment we are desperately hoping we have finally emerged.
Our community in that year consisted of some 16,000 souls,
and in that year 400 new births contributed to a natural
increase of population, i.e., excess of births over deaths, of
13.9 per 1,000 compared with to-day a natural increase of only
6.8 per 1,000 of the population. In the next year, 1914, there
were 420 births, a figure not to be again achieved until 1929—
fifteen years later when the population had reached 27,000.
In 1914, a population of 17,000 produced 420 babies
whereas in 1930 35,000 population produced 452. Exactly
double the population and still approximately the same number
of babies!! Further there was a natural increase of 278 in
1914 and in 1930 it had fallen to 211. Two other facts of the
greatest significance can be deduced from the Table, one that
the relatively high birth rates we have experienced in the past
few years were similarly experienced in the period 1920-23,
and secondly that the Table is highly suggestive of a controlled
birth rate, and that the fear sometimes expressed that there is
a decline in racial fertility is without foundation.
The Table shows that although the population slowly
increased, the number of births fell and the birth rate slumped
during these years when by the hideous demands of war the
best of their procreative potential was being cruelly wasted in
Flanders and elsewhere. With the ending of the fighting and
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