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9. The extent to wliicli certain trades and occupations are carried on in a district
affects its healthiness and affects its death-rate. To trace out the influences of occupation
upon our death-rate completely would be an almost endless task; I have
however taken out from among the occupations followed by males 16, for comparison
of their death-rate with that of the rest of our adult male population. Out of these
sixteen there are eleven which with us predominate over London in the number of
those which follow them. We have among us thus an excess of Law Clerks,
Commercial Clerks, Schoolmasters, Printers, Goldsmiths, Jewellers, Watchmakers,
Butchers, Carpenters and Joiners, Bricklayers, Plasterers, and Brickmakers. In
the remaining five we stand more or less below London generally as to number,
namely, Publicans, Bakers, Tailors, Shoemakers, and Labourers. In the case of the
Females we have a slight excess of Schoolmistresses, Dressmakers and Milliners,
Washerwomen, and Domestic Servants. The class of Needlewomen (a poverty,
stricken and most heterogeneous class of persons) is, with us a comparatively small
one. These five clases include 593 out of the 1000 of bread-earning women. The
Domestic Servants alone form 391 per 1000 of them. Thus more than half of our
occupied women appear devoted to ministering to the necessities of the wealthier
part of our people. (Table XIII.)
MORTALITY, DEATH-RATE, AND SICKNESS.
The registered and tabulated mortality of the year 1864, exclusive of the deaths
of strangers in our hospitals, amounted to 3843. We must add to this the number
234 being the share of deaths in various metropolitan institutions which would fall to
us were those deaths apportioned out to the metropolitan districts in the proportion
of their numerical strength.* With this addition our mortality amounts to 4077. If
we follow our usual practice in the estimate of our population, it was in the middle
of last year 181,896. The death-rate of the year would thus have been 224 per 10,000
living, a rate lower than that of 1863 when we calculated it at 227. Let us compare
this with London. The death-rate of London last year was 264 per 10,000 being
higher than it was in 1863 when the Registrar-General estimated it as 245 per 10,000. t
In the Registrar-General's summaries, Islington always comes out badly, but
then the Registrar-General counts among our deaths all those which take place from
fever and small-pox in the special Hospitals devoted to those diseases. I mention
this now because an instance of this sort of injustice appears in his Annual Summary
of deaths in London for 1864. Ho there gives as the mortality of Islington for the
five last years the following numbers. I place below them the corrected mortality
as I hold it should be estimated. 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864
Registrar-General 3028 3123 3496 I 4560
Corrected Mortality 2992 3150 3217 3854 4077
* I am bound to say bore that although I take credit for so large a number, and have annually
done so in accordance "with this rule of apportionment, there is reason to believe that I am treating our
parish unjustly. From a return made last year to the House of Commons, it would appear that during
the 10 years 1851—60, the aunual correction necessary on this account was only an addition of 20 for
abouteach 2000 deaths. The true correction I presume would bo about the same now, or about 40 this
year instead of 234.
†The following table which I have compiled from a return made to the House of Commons,