[Report 1938] / Medical Officer of Health, Devon County Council.

  • Devon (England). County Council.
Date:
1938
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1938] / Medical Officer of Health, Devon County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    20/112 (page 16)
    1() Rateable Value. The rateable value of the administrative county tor General Purposes is £3,173,472. A penny^ rate produces £12,750. General Mortality. The Registrar-General has issued comparability factors for adjusting Local Death Rates. The factors represent the extent to which the ordinary crude death rates should be modified in order to provide a valid mortality comparison as between one population and another. The reason for the modification being that the populations of all areas are not similarly^ constituted as regards the proportions of their sex and age group components. The result of applying these factors in the Administrative County^ will be seen in Table I, where the crude and adjusted death rates are shown for each of the Urban and Rural Districts, and in the table below, where it will be observed that whereas the crude rate for the County is 13.2, the adjusted rate for the County is 10.2, compared to 11.6 for England and Wales. The total number of deaths registered during the year was 6,099 (urban 3,262, rural 2,837), compared with 6,531 for 1937. The following table shows the crude and adjusted death rates in the Administrative County, compared to the rates for England and Wales, for the last 5 years :— Year 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 Crude rate 13.5 13.1 13.4 14.2 13.2 Adjusted rate 10.4 10.2 10.4 11.0 10.2 England and Wales 11.8 11.7 12.1 12.4 11.6 Table I shows the number of deaths, with death rates per 1,000 population, from some of the more important diseases in each Urban and Rural District of the Administrative County. In the Urban Districts the highest general death rate was in Ottery St. Mary (13.1), and the lowest Totnes (8.0). In the Rural Districts the highest death rate was Newton Abbot (14.4), and the lowest Bideford (7.3). For the combined Urban Districts the death rate was 14.0, and for the combined Rural Districts 12.4, the adjusted rates being 10.5 and 10.0 respectively. Tables X and XI at the end of this Report show the distri- bution and causes of deaths in the several districts, and the causes of death at different periods of life in the Administrative County for the year 1938.