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It will be seen that cancers of the upper alimentary tract among males are
more frequent among the poorer class, the excess being about 22 per cent., while
the excess in cancer of the stomach is even greater, i.e., nearly 44 per cent. These
results agree with the observations of Dr. T. H. C. Stevenson in a paper read before
the Royal Statistical Society on 21st February, 1928 ("The Vital Statistics of Wealth
and Poverty"), in which he showed from consideration of the statistics of male
occupational mortality in England and Wales that the mortality for these cancers
among males increased progressively with descent in the social scale.

The figures show that the married and widowed women of the better-class
area, Group A, where the fertility rates are lower, have a higher mortality from
cancer of the breast and ovary and a lower mortality from uterine cancer than among
the poorer and more fertile class represented by Group B. There is some excess in
total mortality from cancers of the reproductive system among the married and
widowed women of Group A, but among single women despite differences in locality
of growth, the total mortality in the two classes of population is much the same.
Conclusion.
From this analysis of the incidence of cancer mortality in the London population
it appears:—
(i) That among persons over 35 years of age the movements of the mortality
from 1850 onwards are, in the main, correlated with the year of birth and
not with progressive changes in conditions of life.
(ii) That, assuming the same correlation to hold in the future, the female
mortality-rate will continue to decline, while that of males will increase further
for some time.
(iii)That these variations in the total cancer mortality rates, considered
in conjunction (a) with the complementary relation of the male excess of cancer
of the upper alimentary tract to that of the female cancers of the reproductive
system, and (b) with the contrasts in age-incidence of cancers of the reproductive
system by locality of growth among single and married women,
respectively, are consistent with the hypothesis that a cancer diathesis is the
dominating factor in the mortality from carcinoma in the general population, and