FOI reference: FOI-2024-2271
You asked
I would be grateful if you would kindly provide the following information under the Freedom of Information Act. The time period is from 1976 to 2024.
How many children under the age of 14 have died as a result of strangulation from drawcords in clothing?
How many prosecutions have been brought against a company or individual for providing drawcords in clothing to children under the age of 14?
How many companies or individuals have been successfully prosecuted for providing drawcords in clothing to children under the age of 14?
How many companies or individuals have been successfully prosecuted (i.e. found guilty) of causing death by strangulation from drawcords in clothing of children under the age of 14.
We said
Thank you for your request.
Prosecutions
We do not hold any information on prosecutions. This information may be available from The Ministry of Justice. They can be contacted on this email address statistics.enquiries@justice.gsi.gov.uk
Mortality data
We are responsible for the production of mortality statistics for England and Wales, this is driven by information collected from the death certificate at death registration.
Causes of death are certified in most cases by a doctor, who records the sequence of medical conditions and relevant events leading to, or contributing to, the death, based on the deceased's healthcare records and other available information, such as laboratory tests or post-mortem investigation.
Some deaths are certified by a coroner who determines the causes of death following an inquest, based on all the available evidence. It is unusual for wider contextual factors such as the method of strangulation to be recorded on the death certificate, therefore we do not hold the exact requested information.
The following related information may be helpful for your research.
Our mortality data comes from information collected at death registration. All the conditions mentioned on the death certificate are coded using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10). From all of these causes an underlying cause of death is selected using ICD-10 coding rules.
The underlying cause of death is defined by WHO as:
a) the disease or injury that initiated the train of events directly leading to death, or\ b) the circumstances of the accident or violence that produced the fatal injury
- Deaths due to accidental hanging and strangulation in bed are coded to ICD10 code W75.
- Deaths due to other accidental hanging and strangulation are coded to ICD10 code W76.
- Deaths due to assault by hanging, strangulation and suffocation are coded to ICD10 code X91.
- Deaths due to hanging, strangulation and suffocation of undetermined intent are coded to ICD10 code Y20.
Deaths registered between 2013 and 2022 that were due to the underlying causes above are available as part of our explorable dataset available on our NOMIS webservice. Please see the following instruction for using this service:
- Select the geography (England and Wales, regional or by local authority).
- Select Age – All ages or 5-year age bands.
- Select Gender – Total or Male/Female
- Select rates – All deaths, rates or percentage of population for example.
- Select cause of death (ICD10 code search is available).
- Select format (Excel or CSV for example)
As noted, these figures will include all deaths due to strangulation, not just those that may have been caused by a drawcord in clothing.
If you wish to receive strangulation deaths for 2012 and earlier this can be created as a custom output. Our customer output services are subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs in line with our charging policy. Please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk if you wish to discuss further.