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REPORT.
To the Board of Works for the Hackney District.
Gentlemen,
The mortality of the District during this quarter has been singularly
small, 334 deaths only having been registered against 366—the corrected
average for the last three years ; or against 398—the correct average for
1853, 1854, and 1855. The corrected numbers for the corresponding
quarters since my appointment are 394 for 1856; 344 for 1857 ; 361 for
1858, against 334 for 1859; so that the deaths are 10 less than they
would have been in 1857 (one of the most healthy quarters on record) had
the number of inhabitants been the same then as now. The number of
births also are equally satisfactory, 521 having been registered in the
corresponding quarter of 1856; 565 in 1857; 580 in 1858; and no less
than 682 in 1859. These figures are very satisfactory, as they show that
the population of the District must be rapidly increasing. I do not mean
to assert that the number of births is to be taken as a criterion of the
number of inhabitants in any given district, or is to be considered an index
of the rate of increase by immigration, for on the contrary I have ascertained
that it is not so, but adduce these numbers as collateral proof of
the salubrity of the District.
If the population of the District has increased at the same rate as in the
year 1841—51 (as the increase in the number of deaths as well as of new
houses rated to the parishes indicate) the population in the middle of the
quarter would be 77,613. Now as the number of deaths, exclusive of
those in the East London Union and German Hospital, were 301, the rate
of death would be only one in each 257.8 inhabitants; or at the rate of
one in 64.2 inhabitants per year. This is an extraordinarily low death
rate, as it is only in the ratio of 15.5 per 1000 living, annually: whilst in
the whole of London it was at the rate of 20 per 1000 living. In Anglesey
it was 13 per 1000 living per annum ; in Bath and Hastings, 14 per 1000 ;