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45
mortality is causedby diseases acknowledged to be amenable
to the measures which the law empowers us to employ.
But this is not all, for all diseases non-infectious as well
as infectious, are caused or influenced in their course
for good or evil by the condition of the atmosphere, the
water supply, the general sanitary condition of sick
rooms, and the surroundings of dwellings, &c., so that
much of the health and many of the lives of considerably
over 100,000 persons in this Hamlet depend upon your
care and vigilence as the health authority, and nearly
all your duties have a more or less direct tendency
towards promoting these desirable results,
I am not able to make a comparison of the number
of deaths in the different Wards of the Hamlet, owing
to absence of the Registrar's Returns, but I can give
the numbers for each of the two registration divisions
into which the Hamlet is divided.
The number of persons living to each acre is 211.6
in the Western, and 122.4 in the Eastern Division, yet,
and as I showed also in my last Annual Report, the
death-rate in the more crowded division is considerably
less than that of the less crowded. The respective
death-rates per 1000 population being 18.1 and 22.5.
The density of the population in the former being nearly
double that of the latter division. Again, in the class
of infectious diseases, there is a considerable excess of
deaths in the Eastern compared with the Western
Division. The only disease showing a higher deathrate
in the Western Division being diarrhoea. Almost
everything is in excess in the Eastern Division, except
the density of population, which is only half that of the
Western. The birth-rate is higher. The general deathrate
is higher, as are also the rates from infectious diseases
collectively, and with the exception of diarrhœa,
all are individually higher, in some cases as measles
and scarlet fever, nearly double. This appears a some