Vital Statistics: Lowest Death Rate Recorded
The registrar-general's returns for the last quarter broke all previous records. The wet and ungenial summer of 1924 proved singularly favorable to the health of our population. The births recorded in England and Wales totaled 186,648. Compared with the third quarter of 1923, there was a drop of 3,500, and the rate, 19.3 per thousand of population, was the lowest ever recorded in any third quarter of the year, excepting the war years 1917, 1918 and 1919. The deaths numbered 90,155, giving a rate of 9.3, the lowest ever recorded in any quarter in this country since civil registration was established in 1837. As usual, notwithstanding the excess of females in our population, the deaths of males outnumbered those of females, there being 46,705 of the former to 43,450 of the latter, a proportion of 1,075 to 1,000. If the disparity in the numbers