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3.—The third point is to ascertain whether any change has taken place in
the relative ages at which infants die.
In the Fifty-fourth Annual Report of the Registrar-General (1891) is an
analysis of the Infantile Mortality per 1000 births during 1889 to 1891 in
the three counties where it was. lowest, namely, Herefordshire, Wiltshire, and
Dorsetshire, and in the three towns where it was highest, namely, Preston,
Leicester, and Blackburn. As a comparison between the effect of the country
and of the town upon infant life, it is valuable as showing how more and
more progressively destructive the town is to infant life from week to week
and month to month until the sixth month of life is reached, remaining at a
not very much lower point throughout the rest of the year, compared with
the country.
Unfortunately, since then the ages at death of infants have not been
extracted by weeks and months for any year or series of years, so that for
want of the necessary data, the past age incidence cannot be compared with
the present age incidence at death, nor the changes, if any, ascertained. In
these circumstances I have chosen two years, five and-twenty years apart, of
similar summer temperature and total infantile mortality, in St. Pancras, and
with the assistance of Mr. Moon, the deaths of infants under one year have
been specially extracted from the weekly death returns according to ages in
weeks and months, and to certain causes, and have been classified in the
following tables, and the proportions calculated per 1000 births.
It will be observed in the lowest lines of each of the tables that the total
infantile mortality for the whole of the first year of life in 1901 was 2-3 per
1000 higher than in 1876, but that for the second half of the year the
mortality in 1901 was 7 per 1000 lower than in 1876, and for the first half
of the year was 9-3 higher. It will also be seen that the mortality of the two
middle quarters of the year, when added together, is the same in 1901 as in
1876, so that the change that has taken place between 1876 and 1901 is a fall
in the mortality of the last quarter of the first year of life of 6 per 1000 and a
rise in the first quarter of 8.4 per 1000, or, adding these two quarters together,
a total divergence of 14.4 per 1000; even deducting the whole of the original
difference of 2.3, there remains a total divergence between 1876 and 1901 of
12.1 per 1000, a sufficiently striking change. Further, if we analyse the three
months of the first quarter we find that the whole of the rise has been in the
first month of life. Further still, if we analyse the first four weeks of life we
again find that the rise is almost confined to the first week of life, a rise of
mortality of no less than 9.1 per 1000 births, or an increase of the 1901 rate
upon the 1876 rate of nearly 50 per cent. This would indicate that infants are
dying at a younger age than twenty-five years ago in St. Pancras, whereas, as
stated above, the Registrar-General found in 1891 that the effect of town life
was to increase the mortality of infants as they grow older up to the sixth
month as compared with country life.