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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 the
year 1952.
The health of the district remains good and the vital statistics
reproduced within the following pages show, by all recognised
standards, the health of the population of the district can
compare favourably with that of all the towns available for
comparison and with the country as a whole. While these facts
are dealt with at some length in the body of the report it may
be permissible here to mention those regarded as most indicative
of ,a healthy environment. The death rate per thousand
population stands at 9.4 as compared with 11.3 for England
and Wales. Our infant mortality rate is 17.3 deaths per
thousand live births compared with 27.6 for England and
Wales, and our deaths of infants from enteritis and diarrhoea
is nil as compared with 1.1 for England and Wales. Further,
we are able to record that we have had no maternal death.
Each year generally brings at least one outstanding event
with which it is subsequently associated and often identified
for long periods of time; the plague year, the cholera outbreak,
the Broad Street pump epidemic, the influenza pandemic
of 1918, also the year 1947 in which for the first time we were
attacked in this country by the virus of poliomyelitis on a scale
hitherto unknown; it may well be that 1952 will not be less
famous than these because of the London Smog in December
of that year. Even now the full extent of the disaster is only
dimly appreciated and it is recorded that the deaths in London
during the week ending 13th December had only been equalled
on two previous occasions in the past 100 years.
We ,are included in the Metropolitan police area, our staffs
are accepted as metropolitan for purposes of London Weighting.
During the period we shared to the full the Metropolitan
atmosphere and we were not among those to experience the
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