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PUBLIC HEALTH DEPARTMENT,
TOWN HALL WEST HAM.
To the Public Health Committee.
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen,
I beg to submit to you my Eleventh Annual Report as
Medical Officer of Health, and, in doing so, am pleased to record that,
if no great advance has been made in the Public Health of the Borough,
the year, on the whole was a favourable one, and at least showed no
marked decline as compared with previous years.
The Report deals with the year 1897, and contains a summary of
the action of my department for preventing the spread of disease, and
an account of the sanitary state of the Borough generally at the end
of the year, and it necessarily contains many facts and figures included
in previous reports, without which comparison with other years is
impossible.
Area and Population.—The County Borough comprises
4,706 acres. The enumerated population in census year 1891 was
204,902, and the inhabited houses numbered 32,066, giving an average
of 6 3 persons to a house, and 43.5 persons to an acre. The estimated
population, according to the Registrar-General, at the middle of 1897,
should have been 273,682. Assuming the ratio of persons to houses
to remain constant, this figure would imply 43,441 inhabited houses.
In October of last year, however, the approximate number of inhabited
houses in the Borough was 41,939 (see table following), accommodating,
presumably, a population of 264,216, or 56 persons to an acre. I
propose to use the latter population, in preference to the estimate of
the Registrar-General, in calculating the mortality rates.
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