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32
The Council has also had to complete several schemes initiated by
the Metropolitan Board of Works.
The Housing Committee, in accordance with the terms of the Acts,
has considered these representations, and has come to the conclusion
that in the case of some of the schemes, the scientific evidence of
unhealthiness was defective. In some, any scheme that could be devised
would be costly, out of all proportion to the result obtained, in others,
the areas admitted of being adequately treated by simpler methods
than an improvement scheme under Part I. of the Act of 1890.
The Boundary Street area seems to bo in several ways exceptional:
1. As to the scientific evidence of its insanitary condition. This
admits of measurement by:—
a. Its ventral death-rate from all causes.
B. Its death-rate from zymotic or infectious diseases.
c. Its death-rate from tubercular diseases (those allied to consumption,
a very valuable test).
Average or the Four Years 1886-89.
London. Bethnal Green. The Represented Area.
General death-rate 18.9 22.3 40.0
Zymotic ,, 2.6 3.6 8.3
Tubercular ,, 2.7 3.6 8.2
From these figures it is plain that Bethnal Green as a whole
compares unfavourably with the County of London, though the
difference is not perhaps so great as might have boon expected.
Figures are proverbially uncertain, and small differences might be
due to errors of various kinds; to inaccurate estimates of population;
or to peculiarities of population as regards sex or ago. When however,
the death-rates of the Represented Area are compared with those
of Bethnal Green as a whole, still more with that of the whole country,
it will be seen that the differences are such as cannot be explained
away. No errors can account for a death rate double that of London.
Again, there is a very valuable tost of sanitary condition, one
moreover, that is independent of our knowledge of the population, and
of peculiarities of age or sex constitution of the population, viz., the
proportion of deaths of children under one year of ago to births
registered. Thus for the same four years the averages are:
London. Bethnal Green. The Represented Area.
151 159 252
Thus, we see that the chance that a child will die in its first year of
life in the represented area, compared with the like chance of a child
born in London outside the area, is as 5 to 3.