[Report 1904] / Medical Officer of Health, Leeds City.

  • Leeds City Council
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1904] / Medical Officer of Health, Leeds City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/210 (page 19)
    Methods of estimating. that our birth-rate has been decreasing. The fraction i divided by 38*178 is not the same fraction that represented the ratio of the number of children under one to that of the whole population at the time of the 1891 census. The fraction they formed of the whole population at that time was 1 divided by 35*215, while in 1881 the denominator of the fraction was 31766. If the rate of proportionate decrease in the number of children under one, in regard to the whole population, has continued since the last census at the average rate at which it was going on during the preceding ten years, the population in the middle of 1904 under one would be 11,490 instead of 11,791, or 300 less. Consequently the figures in the first line of table 5 must be received with a certain amount of diffidence.* Their general result is, however, that the death-rate in children under the age of one during the year is 188 for every 1,000 living at the middle of the year, and the rates varied from 159 in the second quarter, to 254 in the third. Owing to the defects of the methods of estimating the real infantile population it is more usual to establish a ratio between the number of children under one who died and the number of births which took place in the same period. The births give a larger population than the real one, as the deaths which occur in the first six months are not deducted. Calculated however in this way the rate for the year was 176. This is not what we are unfortunately accustomed to consider for Leeds a very high one. It varied from 147 in the second to 238 in the third quarter. But here again in taking a short period like three months we introduce another defect into the calculation. As births may be registered up to five or six weeks after they happen, the question * The figure 11,490 given above was obtained by taking the figures 35 *2151 and 38-1780 as terms of a geometrical progression, the corresponding term for the middle of 1904 being 39-1778. Dividing the Registrar General’s population by this the number obtained is 11-490. Taking the three terms 317664, 35-2151, and 38-1780, constructing a table of differences and estimating the corresponding number for the middle of 1904 (the 93rd term), the infantile population comes out at 11,540, while by taking the actual population enumerated at the censuses 1881, 1891, 1901, again constructing a table of differences, the ninety-third term for the middle of 1904, comes out at 11,518.