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years, that is, after " the weakly children had been weeded
out." Now, the enigma is—How to prevent such appalling
waste? Hygienic measures, by correcting sanitary shortcomings,
will doubtless accomplish much; but, until the
wretched hovels—where poverty and destitution ever herd—
are razed to the ground,—until new thoroughfares are opened
out, and healthy houses built,—until its dwellings rate above
£9 per house,—it will be impossible to approximate the infantile
death rate of Bethnal Green to Glendale or Country
rates, or, in fact, to those of the more wealthy and favoured
parts of town. Poverty and its accompanying evils, insuffificient
clothing, food and fuel, inability to provide the requirements
of infant life, conjointly with overcrowding, want of
cleanliness, and an atmosphere charged with organic poison,
must, inevitably, generate and intensify disease, and so augment
the amount of deaths. Whence, as infancy is peculiarly
susceptible of all such mal-influences, there occurs an enormous
sacrifice of infant life. " For, as—
A pebble in the streamlet scant,
Hath turn'd the course of many a river,
A dew-drop on the baby plant,
Has warped the giant oak for ever!
so a very little want of care in the training of a child will
suffice to shorten the span of its brief existence, or injuriously
influence the whole of its future life." There is, however,
good ground to hope—when preventive agencies are fully
brought to bear on the physical evils, which tell so fearfully
on infant life—that there will be less generation of, and predisposition
to, disease, and that the mortality under the age
of 5 will correspondingly be reduced.
In Table 6 (framed on the Registrar General's form) I have
arranged the deaths of the males aged 20 years and upwards
according to occupations. Of course, deductions from 1 year's
returns must be viewed as approximations only. It is there
seen that the Weavers far outnumbered any other occupation,
and that many reached to a ripe old age. If we add the