HH62/2/SELKIR/3

Transcription

TO THE CHAIRMAN AND MEMBERS OF THE
PUBLIC HEALTH COMMITTEE OF THE
COUNTY COUNCIL.

MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN,
In compliance with the Regulations of the Board of
Supervision, I have the honour to submit for your considera-
tion my first annual report upon the health and sanitation
of the County of Selkirk.

As I entered upon my official duties in July, and as no
records had been kept for the earlier part of the year, the
report is necessarily incomplete, although I shall endeavour
(as far as they can be compiled from the Registrar General's
reports) to give mortality tables for the year.
I am,
My Lords and Gentlemen,
Your obedient Servant,
M. J. OLIVER.

ANNUAL REPORT, 1891.

VITAL statistics are calculated in ratios to the population
for purposes of comparison, and therefore their accuracy
depends on the exactness with which an estimate of the
population is made. And in order that leap years may be
compared with ordinary years it is necessary to calculate all
annual rates for an average year of 365.24226 days. The
population not being stationary, the number of the people, as
found by the census in March, cannot with accuracy be used
in calculating death rates for June. In dealing with large
populations, such as those of manufacturing towns, it is usual
to make an estimate by means of a formula based on the
assumption that the population is increasing or decreasing
at the same rate as it has done in the interval between the
last census and the one preceding. In a purely agricultural
community, however, the alterations of the population depend
more on differences in the processes of farming than on the
natural increase of the people, and cannot be calculated by
means of a mathematical formula.
In the agricultural districts of Scotland the conversion
of arable into grass land, during the last ten years, has had
the effect of diminishing the population, but this has not been
as marked in Selkirkshire as in many other counties, obviously
because there is little land suitable for cultivation.
Another method of estimating the population is to add the
excess of the births over the deaths to the population of the
preceding year. This, however, would not give a reliable
result, owing to the well-known fact that numbers of the
younger members of the community emigrate to the manu-
facturing towns in search of work, an emigration which also