View report page

REPORT
of the
MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH
For the Quarter ended Sept., 1878.
To the Board of Works, Whitechapel Disteict.
Gentlemen,
In the Quarter that ended on Saturday, the 28th Sept.,
1878, the total births in the District were 644, viz.: 322 males and 322
females; and the deaths 566, viz.: 320 males and 246 females. The
excess of births over deaths has therefore been, during this Quarter, 78.
As the deaths of 125 non-residents, which occurred in the London Hospital,
are included in the mortality returns, a deduction of such deaths must be
made in order to estimate the correct mortality of the District, thereby
reducing the total mortality to 441, and increasing the number of births
above deaths to 203. An allowance, however, must be made for the
deaths of residents in public institutions outside the District; but of
those I have no return. In the corresponding Quarter of the previous year
the total births were 609, and the total deaths 576.
The mortality for the present Quarter is much less than in that of the
preceding one. This reduction in the rate of mortality is remarkable, and I
believe that a similar reduction has taken place in most, if not in all, the
Districts in the Metropolis. This rate of mortality, deducting the deaths
of non-residents, is at the annual rate of only 23.0 per 1000, while the
average rate of mortality for this District, during the last eleven years, is
26.8 per 1000. The rate of mortality in London, for the year 1877, was
21.9 per 1000, and varied in each Quarter from 23.6 to 19.4 per 1000.
In the week that ended August 10th, the local registrar records the
death of a laborer at 12, Wood-street, Spitalfields, aged 103 years. He is
said to have lived in the same house for nearly seventy years.
In the Spitalfields sub-District the births were 167, and the deaths 100 ;
in the Mile End New Town 160, and the deaths 149; iu the Whitechapel
North 109, and the deaths 57; in the Whitechapel Church 58 and 183 (in
this sub-District the London Hospital is situated); in the Goodman's Fields
94 and 37; and in the Aldgate 56 and 40. The deaths have exceeded the
births in the Whitechapel Church District by 125, but from this number the
deaths of the 125 non-residents must be deducted; the proportion of births
to deaths is therefore 58 to 26.