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4
In the last annual report of the Registrar General of Births,
Deaths and Marriages, we are informed that the average annual
birth-rate during the decennium 1885-94 was 31.2 per 1,000 for
all England and 92.5 per 1,000 for the Registration County of
Essex. The annual birth-rate in Chingford is therefore considerably
below the average birth-rate of the whole county.
The number of illegitimate births is not specified in the
returns received by the Medical Officer of Health.
Deaths.
Only 26 deaths were registered in the Urban District last
year, against 37 in 1896 and 53 in 1895. The absolute annual
death-rate was therefore 7.33 per 1,000. Three of these deaths,
however, affected persons not belonging to the district, whilst on
the other hand two of the inhabitants died outside the district,
the one in the Epping Isolation Hospital and the other in the
Epping Workhouse, so that the corrected annual death-rate is only
7.04 per 1,000. The corresponding rates in 1895 and 1896 were
14.6 and 11.13 per 1,000. These remarkable figures furnish
unimpeachable evidence of the habitual heathiness of Chingford,
whilst the decreasing death-rate during the past three years
points to the conclusion that the strenuous efforts of the Urban
District Council and their sanitary officials to improve the health
of the district committed to their charge have not been wholly
unsuccessful. At the recent parish dinner, the chairman, the
Rev. A.. F. Russell, adopted the rather novel view that we are
mainly indebted to our Chingford mud for our natural salubrity.
Without entirely endorsing his opinion in this respect, it must be
frankly admitted that, inasmuch as sanitation is by no means a
perfect science, it is quite impossible to know beforehand what
the sanitarian of the future may have to say on this subject, so
after all there may be more sanitary virtues in our Chingford
mud than we are prepared to admit at the present moment.
On the other hand there can be little doubt that our somewhat
isolated position, cut off, as it were, to a great extent from