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utilized in his Office, and for whose courtesy in doing so the Local Board and
its Sanitary Officers have been under great obligation, it is a matter for regret
that these useful Returns have been discontinued, for no sufficient substitute
is obtainable. I may observe that all the original records of the local
Registrars, for the last eighteen years, have been carefully preserved by me,
and they may be seen on application at my Office.
But it being now decided by the Registrar General that the weekly
returns are not to be any longer sent to the Medical Officers of Health, it
becomes a subject for consideration how the returns of mortality for the
District can bo obtained, so as to make them of the most service to the
public. In order to render the returns of mortality of increased value, it is
of the utmost importance that a list of all the deaths from epidemic diseases,
and the localities in which they occur, should be given upon application at
the Registrar's Office daily to the Medical Officer of Health, so that he may
take prompt measures to disinfect the houses, and adopt such other means
as may be deemed advisable to prevent the spreading of such diseases.
As the Local Board will necessarily have to pay for the extra trouble
which will devolve upon the local Registrars, by their sending a weekly
return to the Medical Officer of Health of all the deaths which have
occurred in the District, it would seem that the Registrars should either,
for this purpose, be the Officers of the Board, or else, by statute, be compelled
to make such a return. Indeed, legislation being necessary, the
expedient course would be to make such return to the Medical Officer of
Health obligatory upon the Registrars, and at a fixed rate of remuneration)
to be paid by the Local Boards.
The local Registrars are elected and paid by the Guardians, but the
Guardians have no control or authority over them; these Officers being
under the direction of the Registrar General, to whom alone they are
responsible.
To enable the Medical Officer of Health to estimate more accurately the
mortality of each locality, it is essential that, in recording the deaths in
"Workhouses and Hospitals, the Registrars should insert, in the weekly
returns, the previous residences of the patients.
This plan has always been adopted by the Registrars of this District ;
and at the present time it is of the utmost importance, in consequence of the
"Bill for facilitating the Improvement of the Dwellings of the Working
Classes in Large Towns" being now before the House of Commons; for the
Medical Officers of Health may soon be called upon to furnish their Yestries
or District Boards with a return of the mortality of defined areas, which he
cannot do unless the deaths in the "Workhouses and Hospitals be allocated to
the Districts from which the patients were removed.
Births and Deaths in the Disteict.
In the quarter that ended on Saturday, the 2nd January, 1875, the
total births in the District were 675, and the deaths 731. The excess of