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II
ONCE in every ten years a medical officer of health is faced
with a peculiar difficulty: he has to write his annual report,
which, very largely, is concerned with the deductions from
statistical matter, whilst the results of the decennial census are as
yet unknown. In consequence, his primary datum is not an
ascertained quantity, but a factor which may happen, within a few
weeks, to be proven quite inaccurate. Although for the purpose of
this report I have made a very careful estimate, and have, as in
former years, checked my computation by reference to the rate
books, yet the possibilities of my being wide of the mark are very
considerable, inasmuch as, since the last census, the character of
the district has changed almost entirely and, although the number
of houses inhabited at last Midsummer is known with fair
accuracy, yet it is impossible to estimate closely the average
number of persons now dwelling in each house.
Should my estimate of the population of the district on last
Midsummer day prove to be quite in excess of the population of
the district at the time of the census shortly to be taken, then,
obviously, my estimate of the general death-rate for 1910 will be too
low; but, if on the other hand, my estimate of the population for last
Midsummer proves much lower than the census returns, the deathrates
will have been set at too high a figure. One statistical result
expressed as a rate is alone independent of the census return. I
refer to the infantile death-rate, calculated as it usually is on the
number of births during the year.
Here we can record progress, without fear of cavil.
In the year 1901, 420 babies were born, and 56 died under the
age of twelve months. This gave an infantile death-rate of 133
per 1,000 births.
In 1910, 682 births were registered, and only 47 deaths under
twelve months of age, giving us a rate of but 69 per 1,000 births.