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Public Health Department,
Town Hall.
Wallington.
To His Worship the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors
of the Borough of Beddington and Wallington.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The year 1944 was marked during the summer and latter half of
the year by a renewal of aerial bombardment in the form of flying
bombs and rockets, and the Borough of Beddington and Wallington,
situated as it is in what has come to be known as "bomb-alley," suffered
considerably in consequence. As a result, a considerable number of
homes were destroyed, a larger number damaged so as to be rendered
temporarily uninhabitable and the occupiers of hundreds of others
exposed to great hardship, owing to leaking roofs and windows denuded
of glass. A very large proportion of the mothers and children were
quickly evacuated to safer areas, and much of the population was
forced to revert to shelter life, with all its inconveniences and dangers,
due to overcrowding. A large number of expectant mothers also were
sent out of the danger zone to specially organised maternity homes in
safe parts of the country. Possibly the slight fall in the recorded
birth-rate and undoubtedly a considerable increase in the death-rate
is a reflection of the unfavourable conditions imposed by this terrible
visitation. The births recorded during the year numbered 468, against
487 in 1943, giving a birth-rate of 17.53 per 1,000, compared with 17.56
in 1943. But deaths, on the other hand, increased from 299 in 1943
to 353, giving a death-rate of 13.22 per 1,000, compared with only 10.75
in the previous year.
The increased number of deaths included 19 directly due to the
flying-bomb attacks, and heart disease and cancer also showed
increases of 20 and 17 deaths respectively, compared with 1943. But
while deaths among older people showed an increase it is gratifying
to record that those among infants, on the other hand, showed a
marked decline, the death-rate per 1,000 births amounting to only
21.36, compared with 46 for England and Wales as a whole and 61 in
the administrative County of London. In this connection it may be
pointed out that the Borough of Beddington and Wallington has, for
a long period, been a particularly healthy place for young children,
as the following statement indicates:—
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