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9
measures and rules that the clanger can be limited or
removed.
Childhood Mortality.
Table V. shows the mortality at various ages. It
will be seen that nearly half the total deaths occurred
between birth and 5 years of age, and the largest proportion
during the first year. This excessive childhood
mortality is an important social problem, and there can
be no doubt but that a great number of children are
killed by preventable causes, including—neglect,
chronic starvation, improper feeding, and infectious
diseases. A great cause for this disproportionate
mortality is in the deficient physical power at so
early an age to resist the effects of disease; hence,
for example, the usual excessive infantile mortality
from diarrhoea, which more matured subjects are
able to overcome. For the three causes first mentioned,
I must confess my belief that there is, at present, only
one effectual remedy—that is to rescue the children
from the control of those who ought, but who either cannot,
or will not, protect them; but who would, I have no
doubt, voluntarily entrust them to the charge of the proper
authorities that they might be rescued from the
misery, cruelty, and the almost inevitable death which
must ensue upon the conditions under which they exist.
As the law appears at present to be administered,
children can only be protected and saved by making
their parents "in-door paupers." This system, not to
receive children into the Workhouse without their
parents, is, I believe, enforced in most parishes, under
the supposition that it prevents parents who can, but
will not, maintain their children, from throwing them
upon the parish; this result is, to say the least, very