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64
One thing which will doubtless strike the reader of
this table as being somewhat deplorable, is the circumstance
of more than one-half the deaths in this Sub-district
during the past year occurred to infants and young children
from birth to 10 years of age. It is a sad reflection, in
this boasted age of improved education, that we cannot
succeed in educating parents to a better domestic care of
their offspring than that which suffers them to die off in
such large numbers from many of the acknowledged
preventible diseases.
Of elderly and other persons who succumbed to
disease, &c., during the past year, from 60 to 90 years and
upwards, amounted to 132, the five oldest of this number
having reached the ages of 90, 91, and 92. Two at the
latter age constitute the oldest persons dying in this parish
during 1874. The united ages of these five persons being
455, it of course gives an average of 91 years to each.
A very noteworthy fact in the table is also the
disparity in the numbers of those dying amongst the
industrial and poorer classes, and those succumbing
amongst the well-to-do and higher classes of society. The
deaths recorded in the first three columns relating to social
position, it will be seen, are out of all proportion few,
compared with the number recorded in the fourth column;
and this was much the same in the last report.
Comparison of Numbers of Zymotic and Non-Zymotic
Diseases resulting in Death.—The Zymotic mortality,
may be pronounced to have been excessive during the past
year, viz., 105 against 65 of the preceding year. The
total deaths from all causes being 528, and the mortality
from the seven principal epidemics 105, it follows that the
per-centage of the latter to the former is 19.8—a much
larger proportion than in the previous year. Of the deaths
due to the Zymotic class of diseases, from 78 to 105 is a
large increase, but the fatal cases of non-Zymotic disease