[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.

    27/210 (page 23)
    The improvement of 7 Per cent, in the mortality of children under one between the five years surrounding the 1891 and the five years surrounding the 1901 census is one that we might congratulate ourselves upon could we have felt certain that the numbers enumerated at the census represented the actual population. An epidemic of measles and whooping cough during the first quarter of the year following upon a heavy diarrhoea death-rate in the third quarter of the preceding year might so diminish the actual infantile population at the period of the census as to vitiate any figures calculated upon it. This subject is so important that I venture to lay before you a table showing the infant mortality in each of the four quarters of each of the years since I came to Leeds, and I append also a diagram which will show the variations which have taken place in the annual mortality during these years and also in that of each quarter, and on these charts certain meteorological conditions which have been calculated from the records kept at the Philosophical Hall for the same periods. J. SPOTTISWOODE CAMERON. March 8th, 7905. NOTES TO INFANT MORTALITY CHART. It will be noticed that the third quarter mortality of children under one was considerable in 1893, 1895, 1897, and 1901, and to a lesser extent in 1898 and 1899. On the other hand the third quarter mortality in 1894, 1902, and 1903 was considerably below the average for that quarter. It is of course in the third quarter that the highest mortality amongst children usually occurs. It was so in every year but two of the fifteen shown on the chart. In 1902 the rate, 172, was the same in the third and fourth quarters. In 1903 the rate in the fourth quarter was a little in excess of that in the third.