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20
BIRTHS—BIRTH-RATE.
The total number of births registered during the year was 3,482—
males, 1,779 ; females, 1,703.
Thirty-one of those (18 males and 13 females) were born at the
Union Workhouse or elsewhere.
Of the total births 56 were illegitimate, and of these 36 were males
and 20 females.
The number of births yearly since the last census was as follows
1901,3,210; 1902, 3,426; 1903, 3,535 ; 1904, 3,649; 1905, 3,389;
1906, 3,594 ; and 1907, 3.629.
The births in 1908 were 147 less than in 1907, and upon the
estimated population of the Registrar-General the birth-rate is 26.48
per 1,000, or the lowest recorded.
In 1880 the birth-rate was 37, followed by 38.5 in 1881, and 40.6 in
1883 and 1884 Since then a steady decline has set in, checked only
in the years 1899 to 1904, and now we have reached the level of the
country as a whole, 26.48 as against 26.5.
Our birth-rate for 1907 was 28.55, and the birth-rate of England and
Wales was 26 3, the lowest ever recorded.
That our population is overestimated by the methods of the RegistrarGeneral
may be accepted as true, and that the birth-rate has materially
declined is equally true, but not to the extent shown. Our rate is
probably equivalent to that of the "76 Great Towns."
We must expect that here as elsewhere similar forces are operating
to check the rate of growth to which we had become accustomed, and
we may attribute much of our decline to slackness of work and the
competition of women with men in the London labour market. I have
no knowledge that in your district less moral reasons have much to do
with it.
Care to preserve and render efficient those children born counterbalances
the small birth-rate, and some compensation for it has been
also found in the lowered general and infant death-rate.