[Report 1902] / Medical Officer of Health, Leeds R.D.C. (Roundhay and Seacroft).

  • Leeds (England). Rural District Council (Roundhay and Seacroft)
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1902] / 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 twelve months ended December Jist, i()02. The deaths reported this past year in our district are in all 76 ; and there are two other deaths in asylums notified to me, 78 in all. Of these, thirty-three are deaths of patients in the Leeds Fever Hospitals, none of whom came from either Roundhay or Seacroft; and three other deaths (that is thirty-six in all) are of strangers, two killed by accident on the railway, and one a suicide in the lake at Roundhay Park. There remain, therefore, forty-two deaths which properly concern our mortality statistics, twenty-two belonging to Roundhay, twenty to Seacroft. Estimating the population of the district to have increased up to the middle of last year by one hundred and twenty-five—the average rate of increase the last ten years— the number of inhabitants should have then been 3,335 ; a total which includes and allows for some increase in the residents of the Fever Hospital. The gross total death-rate, then, works out at 23^4 per 1000. This fact is of no real value to us ; the true death-rate of the district (that is after deduction of the fluctuating part of the census population, the Leeds patients in the Fever Hospital) works out at 13'5 ; or if we include the deaths from accident and suicide, which in any time have indeed formed a pretty constant feature of the year’s returns, 14'3 per 1,000. The births number 67; a corrected birth-rate of 2f2 ; uncorrected by the same deduction as for the death-rate, 20'0g. The infantile death-rate, 89-5 per 1,000 born. There is no zymotic death-rate at all this year. The phthisis death-rate, -6 per mille; from tubercle of all organs, as well as of the lungs, r6 nearly. Distinguishing further, I estimate the population of Roundhay, at the middle of 1902, at about 1,937; and that of Seacroft, which remains very nearly stationary, at 1,136. The deaths in each district, corrected, amount as I have said to twenty-two and twenty respectively. The death-rates will, therefore, be 11*3 and 17’6 for Roundhay and Seacroft respectively. The births are 36 for Roundhay, 31 for Seacroft, and the rates respectively i8'6 nearly and 27. The deaths under one year were four in Roundhay, two in Seacroft; and the respective rates of children under one year per one thousand born come to 111 and 64‘5. The single case of diarrhoea that caused death would not appear to have been due to extrinsic causes, and will not, therefore, come under the heading of zymotic diseases. The phthisis deaths recorded are two, both in Seacroft. Seacroft, therefore, shows death-rate for this cause of iy ; Roundhay o ; from tubercular diseases of other organs there are three deaths reported, one in Roundhay, one in Seacroft, one of a Leeds patient at the Fever Hospital. The corrected total rate for tubercle of all organs I have mentioned already —for Roundhay it is -5 per icoo; for Seacroft it is 2'6. The list of deaths for residents in the district is really more reassuring than it looks ; for of the Seacroft deaths four are of persons between 70 and 80 years of age, one is of a person between 80 and 90, and one above 90 years; of the Roundhay cases two are between 70 and 80, two over 80 and under 90, and one over 90 years of age. This is in either case the best record that has been shown while I have been your medical officer: the average age at death, excluding deaths under one year, being for Roundhay 57-8, and for Seacroft 58-6 years. The birth-rate here, as universally throughout England, is small and show a tendency to decline. As was to be expected, it is considerably smaller among the wealthier classes than it is among a rural and labouring population. But it is falling even among these, a fact which will not surprise anyone who knows what a hold the doctrine which wrongfully goes by the name of Malthusianism has got upon the working classes, though the degree of this hold, few but medical men in general practice can realise.