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labourers at from forty-three to forty-five in the
1,000. These figures may not be expressive of the
exact influence of occupation on mortality, because
it is impossible to eliminate all sources of error;
but they represent nearly enough the general fact,
that there is a great difference in the vitality of
the several classes; for the well-fed butcher and
the prosperous merchant die in far less proportion
than do those who are more exposed to the rough
usages of life; and then again there seems to be
something about the closer occupation of clerks and
needlewomen that makes them especially susceptible
of disease.
If we turn to the other modes of testing this
matter, we shall find that, while in all London the
mean age at death among adidt males is a little less
than fifty-one years, each class has its own particular
longevity. The merchant, shop-keeper, and
domestic servant will live to be nearly fifty-seven
years of age; the butcher, poulterer, and fishmonger
to be about fifty-three. Most of the other classes
will reach to the age of from fifty to fifty-two;
though the painter and dyer, the costermonger and
hawker, the bargeman and waterman, survive only
to from forty-eight to forty-nine; and lastly, the
printer and compositor lives to but forty-five, and
the baker and confectioner to only forty-two.
Anions females the differences of occupation are