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more than 1 per 1000 who reached the extreme old age of 95
years and above. We ascertain from this statement that no
less than 103 per 1000 reached the great age of 75 years and
upwards before death.
The mortality for the whole of London during the year, was
enormously high. The Registrar-General in his summary for
the year, observes that "in January, cold or other unfavorable
atmospheric causes, raised the deaths to what may be termed,
not unjustly, a plague rate of mortality, for in the second week
of the year, they were 2427, and in the third week 2180, and
in thirteen other weeks, chiefly at the beginning or towards the
end of the year, they were above 1600, on two nights in the first
week of January, the thermometer fell as low as 14° or 15°.
The lowest number of deaths was returned in the twenty-second
week, when it was 1213."—"The rate of mortality was 2.645
per cent. The average in twenty-five years, which include two
periods of epidemic cholera, was 2.432 per cent. The deathrate
was not so high as it was last year, in any of the preceding
twenty-four years, except 1847, the influenza year, when it was
2.695 per cent., and 1849 and 1854, the two cholera years,
when it rose to above 3 per cent." In the Central and East
Districts, the mortality was 2.9 per cent., in the West, North,
and South Districts, the death-rate was about 2.5 per cent.
But the first of these groups (the West) was the healthiest,
perhaps, because the people who live in it may enjoy on the
whole the amplest provision of food, fuel, clothing, and houseshelter
against inclement seasons.
In the Northern Districts, the mortality-rate was about 2.53
per cent.; and for Hackney, after eliminating the deaths in
the East London Union and German Hospital, 1 in each 49
residents, or 2.08 per cent. If we add the proportion of