External causes of deaths are those due to accidents or unintentional injury, suicide or self-inflicted injury, homicide or assault injury and ‘intent not able to be determined’ (for example when it is not clear if a death was suicide or an accident). This category also includes deaths due to legal intervention or acts of war.

The most striking feature of the map of all deaths attributed to causes external to the body is the higher rates found in Scotland. As we have said previously, a small part of this excess is due to the different recording system employed north of the border leading to rates being slightly inflated in Scotland in contrast to England and Wales where rates are slightly deflated. These differences in recording do not, however, account for the bulk of the national variation observed.

Suicide, homicide and accident rates in general are higher across Scotland than in almost all of England other than in Blackpool (the city with the highest proportion of divorcees in Britain), the centre of Manchester, that part of Liverpool highlighted earlier with respect to all-cause mortality and homicide, and similar neighbourhoods in Leeds, Birmingham and half a dozen such places in London. Rates of deaths from all external causes are low in the Outer London suburbs, the Home Counties (down to the south coast) and particularly noticeably low in parts of Bristol and Sheffield. The underlying causes for this pattern are largely the amalgamation of the underlying causes for the patterns of falls, self-inflicted deaths and deaths involving motor vehicles, which account for over 60% of deaths from external causes.