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14
For Tables of births, sanitary operations, and cases of sickness among
the out-door poor receiving parochial relief, see Appendix.
The most striking features of the Table given above are the excessive
mortality amongst children under 10 years of age, and the preponderance
of deaths amongst the industrial classes over those that have occurred to
persons in a superior condition of life.
Deducting the total number of deaths from violence, privation, and
premature birth (22) from the general total (280), the mortality amongst
children under 10 years (174) will have amounted to nearly one-half of
the whole. It would be even considerably more than one-half if the
deaths from old age were also deducted from the general total, so as to
leave the comparison to be made upon the mortality that has resulted
during the past year from disease exclusively.
This excess, it will be seen, is not peculiar to this sub-district, but
appears to be everywhere the result of a crowded industrial population,
engaged principally in factory and field labour.
The employment of women in these occupations, the majority of whom
are mothers, is an evil for which the present condition of society, it is
believed, is quite incompetent to supply an effectual remedy.
The preponderance of deaths amongst the working classes over those
amongst the classes above them, points, as it ever has done in this subdistrict,
to the necessity of vigorously opposing our improvements and
reforms to the sanitary defects discoverable in the poorer localities of the
parish.
WILLIAM CONNOR,
Medical Officer of Health for Batteesed.