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13
MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON.
and extinguished. In order to illustrate this subject
to you more exactly, I append a table* in which
the deaths of the last two years are classified according
to the ages at which they occurred. Of
3799 persons whose deaths are recorded in my last
Report, 1318 died under the age of five years: of
2752 deaths registered in the present year, 1032
belong to the same early period of life.
The City of London appears peculiarly fatal to
infant life. Reference to the Registrar-General's last
septennial record shows that of every 1000 male
children under five years of age within the City of
London (aggregately) nearly 113 die in each year;
and the portion of this rate which is deduced from
the East and West London Unions is as high as 119
in the thousand. In a subjoined table†, which illustrates
some points of comparative mortality, I
have endeavoured to show the extreme and disproportionate
amount of this pressure on infant
life. In referring (for instance, in regard of the
City of London Union) to the three last columns
of that table, you will observe that the mortality
of children at the age stated, during the septennial
period, was 1/2.66 of the entire mortality, although
their class numerically constituted only 1/11.09 of the
entire population; so that they died at more than
four times (4.17) the rate which would have fallen
to them as simple participators in the average mortality
of their district. The actual infant morta-
* Appendix No. III. † Appendix No. IV.