[Report 1908] / Medical Officer of Health, Leeds R.D.C. (Roundhay and Seacroft).

  • Leeds (England). Rural District Council (Roundhay and Seacroft)
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1908] / Medical Officer of Health, Leeds R.D.C. (Roundhay and Seacroft). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health for the Rural District of Leeds (Roundhay and Seacroft) for the year igo8. The deaths registered in the district during the year 1908-9 amount altogether to no; fourteen in Seacroft, eighteen in Roundhay, and seventy-eight at the Manston Fever Hospital. There have been notified to me, in addition, two of residents of Seacroft, one of a resident of Roundhay, as occurring outside the district in public institutions. None of the Fever Hospital patients belonged to our district; of the other 32 registered deaths, four were deaths—by suicide or accident—of non-residents, one occurring in Seacroft, three in Roundhay Park. Thus, altogether, the deaths which really concern us are thirty-one, inclusive of the three notified from outside. I reckon the population of Roundhay at the middle of 1908 to have been equal to about 2,570. This is less than the rate of increase which has been usual of late, for fewer new houses have been occupied than has been the rule in recent years. For Seacroft I calculate 1,185 inhabitants, and the permanent staff of the Fever Hospitals, nurses, attendants, and servants with their families—from data—I put at 150 more; the total being 3,905. In stating the gross death-rate, I also include what my data lead me to suppose to have been the floating population of the hospitals in June, exactly as would be the case when a general census was being taken, but that part of the population I ignore altogether for other purposes. Such gross death-rate will work out at 267' per thousand lives, nearly. The actual death-rate, including the deaths outside the district and excluding the foreign suicides, is remarkably low, viz., 7'9 per thousand ; that is for Roundhay, 7^4 per thousand ; for Seacroft, nearly i r2. The births number 70: 38 for Roundhay, 32 for Seacroft. The total birth-rate is thus I7'9 per thousand inhabitants: for Roundhay, 15 nearly; for Seacroft, about 24. Of deaths under one year of age 1 am glad to be able to record only one, a child of six months of age ; the infantile death-rate for the whole district is thus almost I4'2 per thousand born : for Roundhay, nil; for Seacroft, 31’2, nearly. It is significant that this gratifying record takes place in a year when there have not been registered any illegitimate births, for in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the offspring of such issues, in this district, are brought up by hand ; and that, as usual, the advantage is with the more educated class. There has been, further, no marked prevalence of any dangerous epidemic disease. From zymotic diseases there have been two deaths, the diseases being measles and influenza, which makes the zymotic death-rate ’51 per thousand. There have been three deaths from tubercular disease—two pulmonary, one meningeal ; the tubercular death-rate is thus 76 per thousand: for Seacroft, i'5, nearly; for Roundhay, -39. Or reckoning pulmonary phthisis alone, the figures are respectively '5, 75, and -39. Of cancer deaths there have been almost exactly the same proportion, although not the same number, as last year, viz., one-eighth nearly of the whole number of deaths, giving a mortality rate of very nearly r03 per mille, nearly 75 for Seacroft; ri3 for Roundhay. As one has noticed frequently, though it would be hazardous to say it is a law, the people so dying have in this year, as in several recent years, none of them been of the quite poor class, nor has any one of the deaths occurred in a house where there has been, to my knowledge, a previous case. The youngest of the victims was 21 years of age; there was another at 40.