View report page

31
of a (so to speak) non-dying population, but on the contrary
are diminished by the efflux of a certain number of those who,
in a statistical sense, are the very vitality of the family. There
remains therefore a population somewhat below the normal
average in health and strength, which of itself would naturally
yield a comparatively high death-rate, and in which the deathrate
is liable to be still further increased, from the fact that
many of those who have left the parent roof return thither to
die when fatal illness overtakes them. I am not, of course,
asserting that all the households of Peckham are of one class,
or that all the households of Dulwich are of another class; I
am not asserting that all the elder children of the poor go out
to service, or that of those that die, all die at their own homes
and none in the house of their master. But I assert, that the
one class of household prevails in Peckham, the other class
prevails in Dulwich; that the differences in regard to them
which I have pointed out are real differences, which must necessarily
affect the respective death-rates of Peckham and of Dulwich
; and that differences of death-rate due to these conditions
are totally unconnected with local salubrity or insalubrity.
Again, the poor (excepting those of them who go to service)
as a rule marry eailier and are more prolific than those who are
above them in station. Hence a poor population comprises a
proportionately larger number of children than a wealthy population.
But children up to four or five years of age, even under
the most favorable circumstances, die in much larger proportion
than the population at any higher age. Here then is another
disturbing influence operating injuriously on the death-rate of a
poor locality, and not improbably forming a very appreciable
item in widening the interval between the death-rates of Peckham
and of Dulwich.
The fact is that the sanitary condition of a locality is much
more truly measured by the comparative prevalence in it of