[Report 1915] / Medical Officer of Health, Worcestershire / County of Worcester County Council.

  • Worcestershire (England). County Council.
Date:
1915
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1915] / Medical Officer of Health, Worcestershire / County of Worcester County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/34 (page 3)
    Printing Annual Reports. 7. As the result of the Board’s recent instructions, the District Medical Officers have greatly curtailed their Reports ; and whereas in pre-war times nearly all these Reports were printed, 14 of those for 1915 were sent to the County Council in manuscript, and the other 14 were printed. Vital Statistics. 8. Before submitting the Vital Statistics it should be mentioned that the various rates are calculated this year on a basis somewhat different to former years, as the Registrar-General stated, the War has made it impossible to adhere to the previous methods of estimat¬ ing local populations, as men of military age have been either drafted to Military centres, or sent abroad with the Army. Under these circumstances the National Register, although it does not form a perfect record, has been made use of. It has been found necessary, therefore, to limit the tabulation of deaths to deaths of civilians, and the estimated civilian populations for 1915 of the respective County Districts, as given by the Registrar-General, have been made use of in calculating the County death-rates for that year ; but although I sent the Registrar-General's estimates of the civilian populations of the County Districts to the respective Medical Officers, the Officers of 8 Districts have not made use of them in calculating their statistics, viz. : Bromsgrove, North Broms- grove, Droitwich Borough, Lye and Wollescote and Redditch Urban, and Kidderminster, Tewkesbury and Upton-on-Severn Rural Districts. The procedure of the Registrar-General with regard to death-rates, however, is not applicable to the birth-rates, as the births recorded refer to children of civilians and soldiers : con¬ sequently the birth-rate is calculated upon the existing estimate of total population for 1914. 9 Table I. records the birth-rates, the death-rates, the mortal¬ ities, from all causes at specified ages, and causes of, and ages at death, during 1915, in each County District.