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9
MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON.
before any approach shall again be made to the
high death-rate with which the cycle commenced.
It may be useful, for the sake of comparison, that
I should remind your Honourable Court of some
of the more important differences which prevail
throughout the country, in regard to the local rates
of mortality. The extreme rates recorded in the
Registrar-General's last publication, relating to the
septennial period 1838-44, give 14 per thousand per
annum as the lowest average, 33½ as the highest
average, for a population male and female in equal
proportion. The low average belongs to a district
in Northumberland, numbering 27—28,000 inhabitants
; the high average is assigned to Liverpool.
For the whole south-east division of England (comprising
more than a million and a half of inhabitants)
the death-rate is but 19; while in parts of the division
it falls very considerably below this average.
I have thrown these and some similar comparisons
into a tabular form, which may perhaps be interesting
to you*.
Possibly it may occur to you that these comparisons
are devoid of practical application—that it is
unreasonable to suppose we can mitigate our London
death-rate to the likeness of a selected country
mortality—that the circumstances of the two populations
are essentially and unalterably dissimilar—
that the advantages of the one cannot be given to
the other—that the traditional " three-score years
* Appendix No. IV.