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rates in recent years, and was lower than that recorded in any year
since 1840. In the various sanitary districts the birth-rates showed
the usual wide variations, owing to the differences in the sex and ago
distribution of their population. In Kensington, St. George Hanover
Square, St. James Westminstor, 8t. Martin-in-the-Fields, and London
City, the birth-rates were considerably below the average; while in
Woolwich, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, St. George-in-the-Last, and
Fulham, where the population contains a largo proportion of young
married persons, the birth-rate showed an excess.
"The deaths of persons belonging to London registered during the
year under notice were 74,362, equal to an annual rate of 17.1 por
1000 of the estimated population, which was considerably lower than
in any year since civil registration was established in 1837. During
the past nine years of the current decade the rate of mortality in
London has averaged only 19.8 per 1000, while it was equal to 24.4 in
the ten years 1861-70, and to 22.5 in 1871-80. This marked decline in the
London death-rate since 1880 implies that upwards of 132,000 persons
in London have survived whose deaths would have been recorded, had
the rate of mortality since 1880 equalled that which prevailed in the
twenty' years 1861-80. The lowest death-rates in the forty-one sanitary
districts during 1889 were 12.4 in Kensington, 13.1 in Hampstead,
13.3 in Lewisham (excluding pengo). 13.7 in Hackney; 14.0 in
Battersea, 14.1 in St. George Hanover Square, and 14.3 in Wandsworth.
In the other districts the rates ranged upwards to 23.1 in
Stepney and in St. Giles, 23.3 in Fulham and in St. Saviour Southwark,
23.6 in St. George Southwark, 25.5 in holborn, and 26.5 in
St. George-in-the-East. During the year under notice 9635 deaths
resulted from the principal zymotic diseases in London; of these 2670
were referred to diarrhœa 2309 to measles, 1747 to whooping-cough,
1552 to diphtheria, 778 to scarlet fever, 578 to different forms of
"fever" (including 520 to enteric fever, 13 to simple and ill-defined
forms of continued fever, and 15 to typhus), and 1 to small-pox.
Those 9635 deaths were equal to an annual rate of 2.2 per 1000,
which was below the rate in any year on record. The zymotic deathrate
during last year in the various sanitary districts ranged from 1.2
in hampstead, 1.4 in Kensington, in London City, and in Lewisham,
1.5 in Paddington, and 1.6 in Marylobone, in Hackney, in Poplar, and
in Woolwich to 3.3 in Westminster, 8.4 in Bethnal Green, in St.
George-in-the-East, in Stepney, and in St. George Southwark, 3.7 in
Fulham, and 4.5 in St. Olave Southwark. Compared with the preceding
year the mortality from diphtheria and from diarrhœa showed an
increase, while that from each of the other zymotic diseases showed a
decline. Only one death from small-pox was recorded in London