Mortality and sanitary conditions in the "best governed city in the world"--Birmingham, 1870-1910.

The growth of population in nineteenth-century Britain has often been attributed to the decline in mortality during that period. Here the relationship between improvements in sanitary conditions and the fall in disease mortality is considered for one particular city in the period 1870–1910. Medical Officer of Health reports are used to show the spatiotemporal patterns of both a selection of fatal diseases and sanitary conditions in Birmingham in the 1880s. This evidence suggests that administrative developments in hospital provision, for instance, need to be combined with public health improvements in any explanation of mortality decline. Further, that poverty, as reflected by back to back housing, is more closely associated with high mortality than variables measuring sanitary conditions.