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Public Health Department,
Town Hall, Wallington.
To the Worshipful the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of the Borough
of Beddington and Wallington.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to present my annual report for 1951. The report is
drawn up in accordance with the suggestions made by the Minister of
Health in his Circular 42/51. The vital statistics are based on information
supplied by the Registrar-General.
The presentation follows that adopted for the previous two years,
and those services, which are under the control of the Surrey County
Council, the Local Health Authority under the National Health Service
Act, 1946, are reported upon in a brief statistical statement appended to
the report. The services dealt with in this addendum are:
Care of Mothers and Young Children;
Health Visiting;
Home Nursing;
Vaccination and Immunisation;
Ambulance Services;
Prevention of Illness, Care and After-care; and
Domestic Help.
The census of the population, taken in 1951, gave the population of
Beddington and Wallington as 32,751, the male and female figures being
15,094 and 17,657 respectively. This is an increase of 6,423, or 24.4 per
cent., on the 1931 population. The Registrar-General's estimate, however,
is used in compiling the vital statistics; this figure is 32,650.
Apart from the population figures, no detailed examination of matters
of general interest revealed by the census has, as yet, been published.
We may anticipate, however, in due course, an analysis of many factors
of national interest, for example, in housing and trends of population.
The birth rate per 1,000 total population again shows a decrease at
11.17 in 1951, as compared with 12.54 in 1950. This rate is below that
for England and Wales, which is 15.5. Comment on this will be made
later in the report.
The stillbirth rate of 0.37 per 1,000 total population shows a marked
increase on the figure of 0.18, which was recorded in 1950. It is also
higher than the corresponding figure for England and Wales, which is
0.36. Expressed as a rate per 1,000 total births, the stillbirth rate is
30.93. In 1950, this rate was 14.05.
With a small population and a low birth rate, it requires very few
stillbirths to produce high rates. The actual number of children stillborn
in the district was 12, out of a total of 388 births. Each case was carefully
investigated, and it would appear that the stillbirths were inevitable, and
occurred in spite of everything that the maternity and ante-natal services
could do.
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