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Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health—1898. 7
???r several years past that about one in every fourteen of your population is born,
???ows up, lives, works, and often dies within the four walls of a one.roomed
???nement.
Prom Table I. it will be seen that the number of males in the parish is some 200
???excess of the females. This may, I think, be explained by the following facts:.
???the presence of a number of factories where men are employed either exclusively
???mainly; (b) the comparatively small number of domestic servants employed in the
arish; (c) the presence of the Salvation Army Shelter, which attracts to the parish
daily average of several hundred men—(in 1895 the senior district magistrate
stimated the Salvation Army accommodation at 550 per night);—and (d) Bethlem
???ospital, in which there is an excess of male patients. Another point brought
???trongly into relief by Table I. is the fact that the division of the parish into sub.
???istricts affords a more equal grouping of inhabitants than a division by Wards.
Thus the greatest difference between the individual sub.district population is
???,796, whereas in the Wards the extreme difference is 9,304.
This disproportion has a somewhat important bearing on various matters of
administration.
Population.—The number of inhabitants for the whole parish, according to the
Census of 29th March, 1896, was 60,278, as against 59,712 in the Census of 1891. In
the middle of 1898 the figures estimated on the foregoing Census reached 60,466.
The rate of increase was extremely low, compared with that of London generally.
Births and Birth=Rate.
Table II. gives the birth.rate per 1,000 per annum for the years 1895, 1896, 1897,
and 1898 in each sub.district of the parish, in London, and in the thirty.three large
English towns.
TABLE II.
Sub.District.
Birth.rate per 1,000.
1895.
1896.
1897.
1898.
Borough Road
38.2
39.4
37.5
39 6
London Road
Kent Road
30.8
39.6
32.6
37.8
31.4
36.6
32.1
35.5
Whole Parish
36.0
36.6
350
35.4
London
30.4
30.4
29.9
29.5
33 large English Towns
31.6
30.7
30.6
30.3
It will be seen that the birth rate is 0.4 higher than that of the preceding year,
and is considerably above that for the whole of London. The diminished rate of increase
of population in the three sub.districts of the parish of St. George's is, therefore, not
attri butable to a falling off in the number of persons born into the parish, but rather
to a relatively high death.rate, and also, probably, to migration from the parish, since
the death.rate is below the birth.rate in each sub.district. A reference to the section
of the mortality of infants and children will reveal the fact that in the year 1898
nearly one.half, i.e., 45.4 of the total deaths in St. George's, Southwark, have taken
place uuder five years of age.