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Report
Gentlemen,
I have the honour to lay before you my Sixth Annual Report
upon the Vital Statistics of the parish of St. Matthew, Bethnal Green, for
the registration year 1880.
The usual Statistical Tables are placed in the Appendix. They are,
with a few minor modifications, prepared upon the standard forms now
used by the majority of Metropolitan Medical Officers of Health, and have
the great advantage of readily allowing a comparison of the statistics of
one parish with those of others.
POPULATION.
I have remarked in previous reports, that there is very considerable
difficulty in correctly gauging yearly the increase or decrease in the
population of Metropolitan parishes, and as ten years are allowed to elapse
between each census, it becomes year by year more and more difficult to
form an estimate of the numbers as the period for taking the new census
approaches.
This is shown in this Parish ; for though I worked upon the RegistrarGeneral's
own plan, which is based upon the hypothesis that the population
of a growing district will have increased in a ratio derived from the
comparison of the increase that occurred in the preceding decade, and
though I largely discounted the estimate so formed; yet, as was shown by
the recent census, I was no less than 6000 out in my calculation.* I
shall in this and my next report give up guessing, and accept the census
enumeration of 1881 as the basis of my statistics. Some persons may
even then consider that I am taking too high a figure for 1879; but I
believe that our population for the last year or two has been almost, if
not quite, stationary; our births this year are even fewer than last, and
our deaths have decreased.
In my past reports it has been my custom to check the estimate of
population by the number of inhabited houses, as shown by the rate books,
and for 1879 the number thus shown is 17,721 ; but upon referring to
* Dr. Sarvis.the late Medical Officer for this Parish, in his last report, estimated the population
of Bethnal Green at 127,000 in the year 1874, within six of the census enumeration of 1881.