View report page

INFANTILE MORTALITY.
One of the most reliable tests of the public health of a community
and of the sanitary condition of a district is the infantile mortality.
In the first place, migration does not greatly affect the distribution
of deaths at this early age. In the second place the deaths of
infants afford a very delicate index as to disease and the external
circumstances of life affecting it. Expressed in other words life is
most susceptible to its surroundings, most liable to perish, in its
earliest stages. With each week after birth the danger of death
diminishes.
The infantile mortality then is the annual number of deaths of
children under one year of age to every thousand births during the
same year. As we have seen the total births for 1899 were 2,050.
The total deaths of infants under one year in 1899 were 395 out of
the whole total of deaths of 1478. That is to say, that more than
one fourth of all the deaths from all causes were due to the death of
infants, and the infant mortality (in relation to 2,050 births) works
out at 192.6.
In the whole of London during 1899 there were 22,289 deaths of
infants which is equal to 167 in each thousand births. So that
Clerkenwell (with 192.6) is considerably above the London average.
The Registrar-General points out that 167 is "higher by 10 per
1,000 than the average in the preceding ten years." It may be
well to add for comparison the rates in other districts: