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these diseases. Fortunately we have escaped such disasters.
Doubtless some of these conditions have influenced injuriously
the death-rate of Peckham. But Dulwich comprises
mainly the houses of the rich, Peckham mainly the
houses of the poor. A typical Dulwich household consists
of the father, mother and children, and of a considerable
number of other persons —domestic servants —in the prime of
life, and for the most part in the prime of health, draughted,
so to speak, from the poorer households, and therefore from
the poorer localities. Now, the mortality in such a household
is as a rule the mortality of the family, and not the
mortality of the servants of the family. If the latter
become ill and die, their deaths rarely, if ever, occur in the
houses to which they are attached; their own homes or the
hospital become their final refuge. So that in such a household
there is, in varying but often large proportion, a
population which can add nothing to the deaths of the
household, and the presence of which, in a statistical sense,
must necessarily therefore produce a fallacious appearance
of healthiness —a condition the exact converse of that which
obtains at a workhouse or a hospital. Obviously, Dulwich,
which comprises such households in large proportion, owes
no inconsiderable proportion of its apparent healthiness to
this cause. Peckham, on the other hand, comprises in large
measure the houses of the poor. Their inmates consist of
the parents and a family of children, but of no domestic
servants. In fact, the elder and adult children are just the
material of which domestic servants are made, and have
probably quitted home for service elsewhere. So that in
such a household not only are the numbers not swelled by the
influx of a (so to speak) non-dying population, but on the