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REPORT.
Gentlemen,
I havo tho honour to place before you my Annual Report
on tho Vital Statistics and Sanitary Condition of the Parish of
Saint Matthew, Bethnal Green, for the fifty-three weeks included
in tho Registration Year 1890, which terminated on the 3rd of
January last.
POPULATION.
Tho Registrar General remarks that The growth of a population
is determined by two factors, firstly by the balance between
births and deaths, and secondly by the balance between emigration
and immigration." The first of these factors is easily determined
from the returns of the Local Registrars, but the second factor
(which in London is an invariable cause of decrease) is an unknown
quantity, and has to be estimated for, each year during the interoensal
period; moreover, as the census is only taken once in ten
years, it becomes yearly more and more difficult to form this estimate,
as tho period for taking the new census approaches.
The ordinary method of calculating a population is based upon
the assumption that tho rate of inorease which prevailed between
the two previous census enumerations has been maintained, but as
the rate of increase in this distriot has been irregular, my adoption
of this plan would have caused great errors in the statistics, and I
have preferred to base my estimate on the number of children born
during the year in the Parish, as birth rates are known to vary
within very narrow limits, and an inspection of the birth rates