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PREFACE.
To the Chairman and Members of the
Merton & Morden Urban District Council.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to present my Annual Report for 1951.
The outstanding event of the year affecting those engaged
in public health was the 1951 census taken on the 8th April.
Reference is made to some of the facts which have emerged
from the preliminary report which has been issued, in the text
of this report. It will be perhaps of interest here to mention
three very important general factors which the census shows
to be operating in our population structure; there has been a
very great acceleration in the centrifugal movement of
population in the Greater London area whereby the process of
de-population takes place in the City and Central Metropolitan
boroughs and development of new large towns goes on at the
periphery. The second fact of general importance is that for
the first time the census figures reveal an inward migration of
population instead of an outward during the preceding intercensal
period, and lastly the third general feature which
appears to be of such vital importance to us in many aspects
of our work, that at a density of 750 persons per square mile,
except perhaps for the Netherlands we are more crowded
together here than in any other country in the world. This
concentration of population obviously carries with it special
problems and risks.
In common with the rest of the country we enjoyed a respite
this year from epidemic infantile paralysis, the new pestilence
that since 1947 has spread a cloud over the summer holiday
period which, while the numbers involved are small compared
with other infectious diseases,, understandably enough creates
widespread anxiety. This epidemic manifestation of poliomyelitis
is not entirely new as the level of cases in both the years
1926 and 1938 reached twice the average between 1913 and
1946. The 1947 epidemic, however, reached a level of five times
as high as in either of the two previous epidemic years 1926
and 1938 and even in non-epidemic years more cases are
notified than in any of the years prior to 1947.
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