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Deaths.—The deaths of residents of the Borough during 1949 were 1,051 (573 male, 478 female).
This represents a death rate for the Borough of 9.8 per 1,000 population. The deaths in any area are
influenced by the sex and age distribution of the population and to permit of true comparison the RegistrarGeneral
calculates what is called the area comparability factor and when this is applied to the local death
rate the result is 10.7 as compared with a death rate of 11.7 per 1,000 population for England and Wales.
In Tables II and IV the deaths are classified according to the Manual of the International List
of Causes of Death, 1938. To help in classifying deaths the Registrar-General has additional information
not available to the Medical Officer of Health so small discrepancies may occur between Table II supplied
by the Registrar-General and Table IV compiled from local information. All statistical rates recorded
in this Report are calculated from Table II.

The chief causes of death were heart disease (161), cancer (115), and cerebral haemorrhage (48)
in males and heart disease (134), cancer (86) and cerebral haemorrhage (51) in females.

It will be seen that apart from a break in 1938-42 the fall in the infant mortality rate has been
steady and continuous. The rate for 1949 is the lowest in the Borough records. The considerable fall in
the rate in 1949 is due to a marked and unexplained reduction in the number of infant deaths due to
prematurity and congenital defects. On theoretical grounds an infant mortality rate in the neighbourhood
of 20 should be possible and the low rate this year encourages the hope that practice may yet catch up with
theory.
The age distribution of infant deaths is changing and today, as is shown in the following table, the
majority of such deaths occur in babies under the age of one month.