[Report 1884] / Medical Officer of Health, Birmingham.

  • Birmingham (England). Council.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: [Report 1884] / Medical Officer of Health, Birmingham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/140 (page 10)
    Deaths ( continued). Saving of Life. Mortality in Institutions. Discrepancy between Uegistr.ar- (Jeiieral's and own tig\ires. It thus follows that once again I have the satisfaction of being able to announce that 1884 has added one more to the list of those recent years which are distinguished by a large saving of human life. I compute that had the mortality of the last six years of the twelve during which I have held my present office continued at the same rate as that of the first six years, no fewer than 9,880 persons who are now living would have died, a sacrifice of life rivalling that of the bloodiest battlefields. This may seem an astounding statement, and truly it is, but how much greater does its magnitude appear when we refiect that if 9,880 lives have been preserved during the last six years, which, with the same rate of mortality as in the first six, would have been sacrificed, what must be the amount of sickness and of suflering which our community has been spared, a large proportion of which your Committee may unhesitatingly put down to the sanitary measures which have been prosecuted during the last ten years. With prolonged bad trade and considerable distress among certain classes of our population, the pressure of the rates is doubtless much felt, but if the outlay on the additional sanitary measures of the past decade could be compai’ed with the already known results, to say nothing of those wdiich must accrue in the future, the cost of these extra health precautions would surely be much less than the value of the increased exemption from fatal and non-fatal illness which Birmingham has enjoyed of late years. The late well-known statistician. Dr. Farr, computed that the average value of every human life w^as £159. Applying this standard of money value to the lives saved in Birmingham during the last six years we find that the saving of money thus effected amounts to no less than £1,570,920. This immense sum does not and cannot take into account the physical disability and attendant heavy cost which would have accompanied so great an additional loss of life as that we have been happily spared. Last year’s mortality was at such a rate that of 47-5 persons living, one died during the year. The proportion which those who died during the year bear to the whole community is nearly identical with the ratio in the previous year, which was 47'6. The Deaths among the occupants of the several Institutions in the Borough, excepting the Workhouse, increased our total Death-rate by 1-6, while including the Birmingham Workhouse they increased it by 2-9 per 1,000 of the total population of the Borough. My figures will be found as in the past to disagree in some measure with those furnished by the Registrar-General for England and Wales. This want of agreement in the two sets