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10
The ratio of deaths varies very much in Hackney, according to
the peculiar meteorological conditions of each season. Thus during
the first quarter of the year there occurred in 1859 24.4 per cent,
of the whole number of deaths for the year; in 1860 31.3 per
cent.; and in 1861 29.2 per cent. During the second quarter, in
1859 21.4 per cent.; in 1860 23.5 per cent.; and in 1861 22.4 per
cent. During the third quarter, in 1859 27.2 per cent.; in 1860
only 20.0 per cent.; and in 1861 24 6 per cent. In the last
quarter, in 1859 27.0 per cent.; in 1860 24.7 per cent.; and in
1861 only 23.8 per cent.
The ages at death varied from the average chiefly in the larger
proportion of deaths between 1 and 20 years, and between 40 and
60 years of age; also in the smaller proportion between 20 and
40 years. There were 328 deaths of children under 1 year, or
18.8 per cent.; 468, or 26.8 per cent. of young persons above 1 but
under 20 years old; only 199, or 11.5 per cent, of those between
20 and 40; 279, or 16.0 per cent. of persons between 40 and 60;
367, or 21.0 per cent. of individuals more than 60 and less than
80; and 104, or 5.9 per cent. of old persons above 80 years
old.
The Registrar General states, in his summary for the year 1860,
“that in the ten years, 1840—49, the mean rate of mortality in
London was 2.51 per cent.; and in the subsequent decennium,
1850—59, it fell to 2.36 per cent. It is still more satisfactory to
observe that the rate of mortality in each of the three last years,
1859—61, has been less than the lower of the two rates that have
just been mentioned. In 1860 the rate was 2.26, in 1861 it was
2.32. If the mortality of London were confined permanently
within, the limit represented by the mean of the last three years,
the effect of that reduction in the population as it exists at present
would be that more than 4,000 persons would survive annually,
whose lives would drop under the mean rate derived from the
twenty years, 1840—59.”