View report page

4
This lowered and favourable rate is highly gratifying, and if maintained
will be largely due to the closer supervision now exercised over
school children compared with former years, and to the preventive
measures adopted against the spreading among them of the various
infectious fevers.
The death-rate from Diarrhoea was but .3 per 1,000 compared with .5
for England and Wales, and .65 for the "76 Great Towns."
The Measles rate was lower than that of the Large Towns, but
similar to that of the whole country, while our death-rate from
Whooping Cough was a negligible quantity—two deaths only having
been recorded.
The rate based on the deaths of children under 1 year of age
proportionately to the births registered, is a known and reliable one, and
not subject to the possible error of over or under-estimation of population.
This rate—the Infantile Mortality Rate—for 1908 is the very lowest
on record, and compares most favourably with that of the country as a
whole and those Towns which claim a favourable rate for some
special measures taken by their citizens or officials, or both.
Our average infantile death-rate of 134.9 for the years previous to
1901 has since that date shown a steady improvement, and for the
first time a rate of 100.8 per 1,000 born has now been reached.
Compared with 110 for Rural England, 128 for the "76 Great
Towns," and 108 for Huddersfield, this rate is evidence that the
conditions existing here in 1908 were favourable to child life, and that a
standard rate of 100 is capable of attainment.
Had the Notification of Births Act been adopted and the work
incidental thereto carried out during the year, to that measure would be
given the credit of our improved rate, rather than to the actual forces at
work, such as improved sanitary conditions, the spread of education,
and the fuller recognition of the duties of motherhood.
While all the death-rates are most favourable and show a considerable
improvement on previous years, the birth-rate is lower than 1907, and it
has shown for years a steady diminution, until we now touch the lowest
recorded and approximate that of the whole country.