View report page

7
I quote the following remarks from the Annual Summary just issued
by Sir Brydges Henniker:—
General Register Office, Somerset House,
30th April, 1880.
A considerable improvement has taken place in the health of London in recent
years; thus the average annual mortality to 1000 inhabitants was 24.1 in the thirty
years 1841-70, whereas in the nine years 1871-9 it fell to 22.9, shewing a decrease of
5 per cent. In the year 1879 the death-rate was 23.3, nearly the same as that in the
previous year.
It is now more than nine years since the inhabitants dwelling on the 75,362 acres
(exclusive of 2718 acres of the Thames) of the metropolitan area were enumerated,
and their number can only be exactly determined when the results of the Census of
1881 are known, but in all probability the population at the middle of 1879 did not
much exceed 3,620,868, having increased more than a third of a million since 1871.
Such a large addition to the population of London, converting the outskirts formerly
thinly populated into crowded districts, implies an increase of mortality; any
diminution, therefore, in the metropolitan death-rate since 1871 indicates that some
countervailing elements have been in operation to bring about such a gratifying
result, which may be justly attributed to improved sanitation. Medical and sanitary
science has been skilfully utilized by the 47 medical officers appointed originally in
1858 to keep watch and ward over the public health, and through their instrumentality,
supplemented by great sanitary works, thousands of untimely deaths have
been prevented.
In the 53 weeks of 1879 the births in London amounted to 134,096, the deaths to
85,540; so the natural increase of population was 48,556, or at the rate of 131
daily.* The estimated increase of population over the previous year was 43,423, or
119 daily.
The reduction in the mortality already effected represents a saving of more than
four thousand lives annually during the last nine years, but many sanitary improvements
are still needed, and when the water supply is unpolluted, the air purer, local
sewerage more complete, and vaccination more efficient, the circumstances of the
population of this great city will be so much more favourable to health that the
mortality will probably be reduced to at least as low as 20 per 1000, which, it has
been laid down, the mortality of none of our towns should now exceed. A diminution
of one per 1000 in the annual death-rate of the present population of
London implies the saving of about 3600 lives; a reduction, therefore, from 23, the
present rate, to 20, would show a saving of more than ten thousand lives annually.
BIRTHS AND BIRTH RATE.
The births during the year were 5246 a rate of 39.3 per thousand
population, the corresponding Metropolitan rate being 36.5, a difference
in our favour of 2.8.
* On an average there was, in London, in 1879, one birth about every four minutes, and one
death about every six and a quarter minutes.