The Ghost of Christmas Past: health effects of poverty in London in 1896 and 1991

The penultimate paragraph of the Results section in this paper by Dorling et al (23-30 December, pp 1547-51) should read: “The results of further correlation analyses suggest that for deaths under the age of 65 the modern index makes a slightly greater contribution to predicting all cause mortality in 1991-5 (r=0.56, P<0.001) than does the Booth index (r=0.46, P<0.001). This is substantiated by the results of the partial correlation analyses, where r=0.39 (P<0.001) when mortality is correlated with the modern [not the Booth] index, controlling for the Booth [not the modern] index, but r=0.08 (P=0.36) when mortality is correlated with the Booth index, controlling for the modern index.”