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Annual Report
of the
Medical Officer of Health,
FOR 1904.
To the Members of the Southall-Norwood Urban District Council.
Gentlemen,
I have the honour to present for your consideration my
Fourteenth Annual Report on the Vital and Sanitary condition of
your District. For convenience of reference the Report is divided
into Sections, which deal respectively with Vital Statistics, Infectious
Diseases, and General Sanitary circumstances. The large increase
in population which has taken place during the last three or four
years, must have had some uufavourable influence on the rates of
mortality and sickness; not perhaps so much from the greater
' density' of population, but from the tendency to aggregation in
particular streets and houses, since it is rather the average number of
persons per house than the number per acre which influences the
Vital Statistics.
The Bye-laws relating to houses let in lodgings in force in the
District are a great preventative against overcrowding, since they ensure
that the domestic and sanitary circumstances in a house which may
not be legally overcrowded are satisfactory. The Sanitary Inspector
has done much good work in this direction, by house to house
inspection.