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17
That the annual rate of mortality for London will still further
diminish when educatiou becomes more extended and the laws of health
better understood, and when the workmen who are employed in unhealthy
businesses are relieved by judicious appliances from breathing
the poisonous emanations which are given off from the materials used in
the manufactory—the long hours of labour are diminished—the workrooms
of tailors and milliners are better ventilated and less crowded, and
the work-people have greater facilities of inhaling the fresh air and in taking
exercise whereby the physical constitution may become developed—the old
"sweating system," so graphically described by the late Canon Kingsley,
in "Alton Locke," is entirely abolished—when every room in which
more than two persons work for hire shall come under the factory regulations—mothers
are able to provide better food and clothing for their
young children and devote more time to the care of them—the drinking
habits of the people are altered for the better—when the spreading of
epidemics, especially those attacking young children, such as hoopingcough
and measles, can be prevented—when greater care is taken to
prevent accidents in the public streets—and when more general and efficient
measures are taken to prevent syphilis, from which disease the average
yearly mortality in London is 468.4—then we may reasonably hope to
find the mortality greatly reduced.
I may, however, here remark that notwithstanding all the care which
may be given to the carrying out of the most approved sanitary arrangements
a poor district will always have a much larger rate of mortality than a rich
one ; and it will be found that the mean duration of life in a population is
several years longer in a district where all the necessaries and comforts of
life can be procured in required quantities, than in a district where the
reverse of that is the case.
Thus the mean duration of life of males and females in 1841 in St.
George's, Hanover Square, in children under 1 year to 10 years was 38.5
years; from 10 to 20 it was 48.6, and from 20 to 30 it was 41 years;
while in the Whitechapel district for the same years it was 32.6, 43.6, and
35.5 years respectively, showing that the expectation of life in the three
decenniads was, in the Whitechapel district, as compared with that of St.
George, Hanover Square, less in the first decenniad by 5.9 years, in the
second by 5 years, and in the third by 5.5 years.
Health of London.†
"The mortality was at its usual rate of 24.2 per 1000 over the 24
years 1840-73; it was as high as 30.1 In 1849 ; 29.4 in 1854; and 26.5 in
1866, when cholera was epidemic—it was as low as 21.5 in 1872; and 22.5
* See remarks in table on p. 12.
† See Registrar-General's 36tli Annual Report, p. LX.