[Report 1917] / Medical Officer of Health, West Bromwich County Borough.
- West Bromwich (England). County Borough Council.
- Date:
- 1917
Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Credit: [Report 1917] / Medical Officer of Health, West Bromwich County Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![VITAL STATISTICS. POPULATION. The Registrar-General has again supplied two esti¬ mates of population,, the estimated total population civil and military, which is used for the purposes of calculating the birth-rate, being 74,932 for the vea] 1917, and the total civil or resident population, which is used for the civilian death-rate, being 67,221. As these estimates are based on the assumption that the rates between the total and civil population is the same in West Bromwich as in England and Wales as a whole, they are obviously purely arbitrary in character, and there is no> doubt that the figure for the existing resident population is underestimated. Reasons for this belief were cited in the last Annual Re¬ port, and experience gained last year as a, result of the measles epidemic and house to house inspections confirm this yiew, and it is tolerably certain that the resident population is well over 70,000. BIRTHS. y t The actual number of births registered in the district was 1,709. Eleven of these births, which occurred in the Workhouse Infirmary, were transferred to other districts, whilst there were ten inward transfers. The net number of births, therefore, was 1,708, or a birth-rate of 22.8. The corresponding figures for 1916 were 1,905 and 26.2. and these, it was then stated, were the lowest on record. Com¬ pared with the average annual birth-rate for the quin¬ quennial period, 1912—1916, which was 29.7, it will be seen that the reduction is most marked in character, and is indeed the most noteworthy since the outbreak of the war. At the same time it compares favourably with the birth-rate for the 96 great towns in, England and Wales, which in 1917 was 18.1. The excess of male births over female births was 53. This excess was greater than that of the previous year, viz., 31, but not so great as in some preceding years.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30259678_0004.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
