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premature birth, low vitality or congenital malformation;
being beyond the reach of life-saving measures. The other 309
cases it is but reasonable to assume include many in which
proper food, clothing, and care would have averted the
excessive mortality amongst the very young, which it is the
aim of sanitarians to reduce.
Altogether under 5 years of age 605 deaths occurred or 60.3
per cent of the number at all ages. This is rather below the
average but is vastly in excess of what should be the rate.
Above 80 years of age 22 persons died during the year,
exactly twice the number of the preceding year.
Zymotic diseases.—It is in the direction of diseases of this
class that careful sanitary administration is expected to
indicate progressive improvement by a persistent diminution
in the various diseases grouped under this heading. The
subjoined table shows this most distinctly; a markedly
diminished number of deaths having been recorded year by
year, and that in a rapidly increasing population, containing
a large proportion of young children, as is indicated by the
high birth rate, and amongst whom a great proclivity to these
diseases is always to be found.
1883 1882 1881 1880 1879 1878
Whooping Cough 53 56 37 43 39 63
Diarrhœa and Dysentery 51 37 45 78 43 71
Measles 25 33 60 22 47 6
Scarlatina 17 36 20 63 44 19
Croup 15 3 4 4 9 12
Fever
Enteric 13 Typhus 1 14 14 17 15 13 12
Diphtheria 6 7 3 2 6 4
Metria (Child-birth) 3 4 8 5 12 2
Erysipelas 136440
Small Pox 0 0 17 1 1 5
Carbuncle 0 1 0 0 0 0
Total 185 194 217 237 218 194
Zymotic death rate per 3.0 3.2 3.7 4.3 3.9 3.7
1,000 per annum.