Seventeenth annual report of the Registrar-General on the births, deaths, and marriages registered in Scotland during the year 1871; and seventh annual report on vaccination.

  • Great Britain. General Register Office.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Seventeenth annual report of the Registrar-General on the births, deaths, and marriages registered in Scotland during the year 1871; and seventh annual report on vaccination. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    more instructive view of the mortality of the Eight Towns may be obtained from Table X., and especially from its last three columns, in which the mor- tality per-centage of two years in immediate succession, 1870 and 1871, is contrasted with the mean mortality per-centage deduced from the Re- turns of the ten years terminating with 1870. As usual, it is found that the death-rate has been far from uniform in the Eight Towns. Thus, for every thousand persons in each town, there were registered at the rate of 20*8 deaths in Perth, 22*5 in Aberdeen, 23T in Leith, 26*9 in Edinburgh, 27*4 in Dundee, 29#4 in Greenock, 30T in Paisley, and 32*9 in Glasgow. Of the 31401 persons who died in the Eight Towns during the year, 13889 were under 5 years of age, 3568 were between 5 and 20 years of age, 9089 were between 20 and 60 years, and 4855 were above 60 years of age. This indicates that 44*2 per cent, of all who died were under 5 years of age, 11*4 per cent, between 5 and 20 years, 28*9 per cent, between 20 and 60 years, and 15*5 per cent, above 60 years of age. In last Annual Report a special table was introduced to illustrate the mortality of children under 5 years of age ; and if it could be assumed that the numbers of those living at ages under 5 years were approximately known for each of the Eight Towns, such a table might be here reintroduced with advantage. But till the inquiries connected with the recent census are completed, the numbers of those living under 5 years of age cannot be ascertained with the requisite accuracy ; and it has consequently been de- termined that in the meantime no estimate of mortality, founded on the ratio of those living to those dying in early childhood, shall be presented. It may, however, be well to record the observed proportion between deaths at ages under 5 years and the total deaths in each of the Eight Principal Towns. In Perth, the per-centage of deaths at ages below 5 years to the total deaths at all ages was only 28*3 per cent.; in Paisley, 36*3 ; in Edin- burgh, 38*2 ; in Aberdeen, 38*7; in Dundee, 4P2; in Leith, 43’5 ; in Greenock, 47*6 ; and in Glasgow', 48'6 per cent. In the present Annual Report there is, for the first time, inserted, at p. 50, a table obtained by combining the Monthly Returns, and exhibiting in a general way the share which each group of diseases and each registered cause of death has had in the mortality of the Eight Towns, during each month of the year reported on. In this table the whole of the Eight Towns are treated as constituting a single district, and the months referred to are the ordinary calendar months, not adjusted or reduced to equal periods of time. If it be desired to form an estimate of the comparative salubrity of the Eight Towns, reference must be made to other tables of this Report. If it be desired to deduce the average intensity of any cause of death in the country at large, this may be done with tolerable accuracy by noting from month to month the number of deaths attributed to that cause in the new table. Each number, when divided by the number of days in the corresponding month, of course gives the average daily mortality for the month. But, even in its present form, the new’ table presents a sufficiently suggestive view of the main features of mortality throughout the whole of Scotland at twelve different periods of the year, and will be found especially useful when it is desired to trace the influence of seasons, in connection with the spread and subsidence of epidemics and general causes of mortality, in our more densely populated districts. The class of Zymotic (epidemic and contagious) diseases caused 7722 deaths in the Eight Towns during 1871, thus proving fatal to 72*7 persons