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is a number exceeding, by nearly 20, one-half of the total
mortality at all ages. The amount of ignorance amongst
the working classes, concerning these natural laws which
influence the mental and bodily health of children, is most
deplorable, and has needed as much of the correcting hand
of the Legislature as any other social evil that has ever
occupied its attention.
The deaths of persons of advanced life, that is to say,
of those between GO and 100 years of age, were 511. Of
these, 130 were registered as resulting from Old Age or
natural decay, and the remainder from certified disease or
accident. The oldest of these persons was a, female, who
succumbed at the advanced age of 99, and who was a
resident in Battersea at the time of her death.
Social position of the deceased persons—Sickness and
Mortality amongst the Union Poor.—The difference in the
amount of fatal disease amongst the various classes of
society, as shown in Table No. 1. Appendix, is found to be
slightly in favour of the labouring classes. The deaths
amongst the three classes collectively, above that of the
industrial or labouring class, were in the proportion of
1545 of the former to 1514 of the latter. It is submitted,
there is no fact furnished by these statistics that points
out more clearly than this, the direction which sanitation
has lately been made to take.
It is the generally received opinion that the localities of
a district, in which the Union Poor for the most part take
up their residences, are the abiding places of all the more
severe and fatal forms of disease. This is certainly true
in the abstract, but it is not a little gratifying to find (vide
Table V. Appendix) that of 6,037 cases of sickness amongst
the out-door Parochial Poor, treated by the Union Medical
Officers of the five Sub-districts, there are only 227 resulting
deaths to be found recorded in the Union medical relief
books.