The Annual Report on the Health of the Parish of St. Mary Abbotts, Kensington, during the year 1874

Transcribed from the 1875 J. Wakeham edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
BY T. ORME DUDFIELD, M.D., MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH.
KENSINGTON: J. Wakeham, Printer, 4, Bedford Terrace, Church Street.
1875.
To the Vestry of the Parish of St. Mary Abbott’s , Kensington .
Gentlemen,
I propose in this, the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health, to follow the plan adopted in my previous reports: that is to say, the vital statistics will be made up to the end of the registration year (January 2nd, 1875), for the sake of comparison with the Registrar-General’s figures for the entire Metropolis: the Tables, showing the sanitary work carried out by your very competent staff of inspectors, will be made up to the end of the Vestry year (March 25th, 1875); while, with respect to other matters calling for notice, I shall bring the report down to the latest possible period, no useful purpose being served by delay; it being, moreover, in every way the better plan to refer to subjects while they are tolerably fresh in recollection, and before they have lost their interest. I shall, as usual, preface my report with some general remarks, which, I trust, will be found worthy of perusal. And I may here mention that the first Six Tables in the Appendix are given in the form settled last year by the Society of Medical Officers of Health, with a view to ensure uniformity in statistical returns. The subject was brought under the notice of the Society by myself, and a great deal of thought and labour devoted to it, in order to make the tables generally acceptable. I now pass on to observe that the public health in this Parish, as gauged by the gross mortality, was not so good during the year 1874 as in the previous year, the deaths registered (2,696) showing an increase of 260. The increase in the rate of mortality, however, was not large in proportion, for as the population increased by 5,000, 91 deaths have to be deducted on that account, while 32 deaths are accounted for by an increase in the number of deaths of non-parishioners registered at the Brompton Hospital for Consumption and the Diseases of the Chest. The real excess of mortality, therefore, was 137, and of these deaths 98 belong to the group of zymotic diseases, and were due to a severe and prolonged epidemic of measles, leaving 39 deaths to be spread over the remainder of Table 3 (Appendix); but as a matter of fact the higher rate of mortality from chest diseases, which will be referred to hereafter, more than accounts for this number. If we assume that the deaths of Kensington parishioners outside the parish were as numerous as the deaths of non-parishioners at the Brompton Hospital, which is situated within the parish, the rate of mortality during the year would be 19.5 per 1,000 persons living—a rate that compares not unfavourably with the rate for the entire metropolis, which was 22.5 per 1000. If, however, in the absence of definite information respecting deaths of parishioners taking place out of the parish, we restrict our view to the deaths of parishioners registered within the parish—deducting 125 deaths at the hospital and 36 at St. Joseph’s House—the rate of mortality was only 18.3 per 1,000. The subjoined table shows the rate in the several great divisions of the metropolis, as given by the Registrar-General in his annual summary, and in Kensington:—