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11
the City, which, instead of being at the rate of
34.8 per 1,000 of the population, as it is in all
England, or at the rate of 34 per 1,000, as it is in
the rest of London, is only 20.5 per 1,000. To be
able to judge, therefore, of the comparative mortality
of children, the facts must be examined from
another point of view, as by looking at the deathrate
among infants of less than a year old.
In the course of the last year there were 2,350
births in the City, and there were 436 deaths of
children under 1 year of age; consequently, of
every 1,000 children born in the City during the
year, 185 died before they had reached the first
birth-day—the proportion in the several districts
being from 224 per 1,000 in the Western District,
to 154 in the Central. In all England the proportion
is but 148 per 1,000, and in the whole of
London it is but 151. It is manifest, therefore,
that the mortality of infants in the City is excessively
large, and it is explained by the circumstance
that it represents almost entirely the death-rate of
the children of the poor; in fact, year by year as
the better classes of the population leave the City,
and the residue of the married or productive portion
of it gets to be poorer and poorer, the death-rate of
infants becomes, as we might expect, larger and
larger. In the course of the last ten years it has
increased from an average of 170 per 1,000 to 185.