View report page

10 Parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark.
If it be permissible to offer any observation upon the foregoing figures, and
bearing in mind that comparisons of the kind are open to fallacies, it may be said
that George the Martyr, Southwark, stands roughly with regard to its death-rate
where London stood in the ten-yearly period 1851-60. At the same time the deathrate
in both cases has shown a most satisfactory and uniform average decrease.
Zymotic or Preventable Death-Rate.
It may be noted that the term "zymotic" applies to the following seven diseasesSmall-pox,
measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough, "fever" (ie.
typhus, relapsing puerperal, simple continued and typhoid) and diarrhœa.
I have called the above zymotic diseases "preventable," because I regard all
communicable diseases, broadly speaking, as coming under that heading. Diarrhoea
is a symptom as well as a specific disease, and, although not usually communicated
from one person to another, it may be regarded as the almost invarable result of bad
environment. At the same time, it must be clearly understood that a vast amount
of preventable disease, such as that due to alcoholism, is not zymotic. In other
words, while all zymotic disease is preventable, not all preventable diseases are
zymotic.
The corrected death-rate in St. George's, Southwark, from the seven principal
zymotic diseases was 4.0 per 1,000 in 1898, as against 2.8 per 1.000 in the whole of
London for the same period, and 2.9 in the thirty-three great towns of England and
Wales.
As in the calculation of the general death-rate, so with the zymotic death-rate,
the deaths of non-pirishioners occurring within tho district have been excluded; on
the other hand, tho deaths of parishioners in public institutions outside the parish
have been included. Unless a proper distribution of these deaths be made, especially
of those from zymotic diseases, no really trustworthy data can be secured upon which
to calculate the rates of mortality.
Among the forty-three sanitary areas the zymotic death-rate ranged from 0.88 in
St.-Martin-in-the-Fields, 129 in St. George's, Hanover Square, 1.40 in Hampstead,
1.51 in St. James, Westminster, 1.56 in Stoke Newington, and 1.76 in Strand, to 3.90
in Bethual Green,3.95 in Shoreditch, 4 0 in St. George's, Southwark, 4.04 in St. Luke,
4.13 in Woolwich, 4.26 in Limehouse.
TABLE VI.—Fok the Year 1898.
Birth-rate per 1,000.
Death-rate per 1,000.
Zymotic death-rate.
Phthisis death-rate.
Other Tubercular
Diseases death-rate.
Respiratory Diseases
death-rate.
Deaths under 1 year,
to 1,000 births.
Percentage of deaths
under 5 to total deaths.
St. George's, Southwark
35.2
24.3
4.0
3.2
1.1
1.9
188
46.6
London
29.5
18.7
2.8
-
-
-
167
-