London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

View report page

City of London 1856

Report on the sanitary condition of the City of London for the year 1855-56

This page requires JavaScript

18
cabinet makers, and workmen in wood, to 52.4.
Clerks, accountants, porters and messengers reach
to the age of from 52 to 52.3. The same is about
the mean age at death of blacksmiths, gas fitters,
and the workers in the coarse metals generally;
while publicans, wine merchants, waiters, tailors,
laborers, and shoemakers live to the age of from
49.9 to 50.3. Cabmen, carmen, ostlers, and draymen
live only to 49.4; and soldiers, sailors, and
policemen reach only to forty.eight years. A like
difference exists in the longevity of females; for
while the wife of the shopkeeper will live to be
about fifty.seven years of age, and the domestic
servant to 51.5, the wife of the publican and beer.
shop.keeper, and the wife of the cabman and ostler
will only reach to 44.2 and 48 years of age; and
worse still, the poor needlewoman sinks into the
grave at 42.6 years of age.
These facts show that the influences which are at
work in shortening the duration of life are not merely
of a general character, but that they are affected by
the habits of the people. Where there are bad food,
close confinement, filthy dwellings, and improvident
or vicious habits, there the life.time is short; but
where the conditions are of an opposite character,
as in the case of male servants and shopkeepers, it is
nearly as long as it is in England generally. This
is farther borne out by the per centage causes of
death; for consumption and fever are most fatal