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8
MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON.
years (the period for which I have had the honour
of serving the Corporation) I find that 9,493 deaths
have taken place: which, the mean population of
the time being 129,256, gives an average rate of
24.48 deaths per thousand per annum. This accords
pretty nearly with a death-rate (24.36) deduced
from the septennial period 1838-44, during which
(according to the Registrar-General) 22,127 deaths
occurred in a population estimated at 129,739.*
Assuming our City mortality to be accurately
represented by these averages, I need not inform
your Honourable Court that such a death-rate is
unduly high. I have already, in previous Reports,
laid before you the materials for measuring its
excess,—materials which seem to show that our
existing death-rate is nearly the double of that
which better circumstances have elsewhere rendered
attainable.†
It is not to the City alone of metropolitan districts
that this high mortality belongs. Unhappily it
affects the entire Metropolis; and we may find other
* Since 1841, when the Census gave these figures, the limits
of the West London Union have been slightly altered. The
Inner Temple and Barnard's Inn have been added to it, while
part of St. Sepulchre's parish has been taken away.
† The death-rate to which I particularly refer in the text, and
which I cited in my last year's report, is that of a large district
in Northumberland, numbering 27,628 inhabitants, where, during
the seven years 1838-44, the mortality was at the rate of only 14 per
thousand per annum ; and even in this comparatively low proportion
a very distinct share might still be called preventable deaths.