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“ The marriages numbered 34,617, giving a proportion of
16.1 persons married to 1,000 of the population. This is the
lowest marriage-rate as yet recorded in London. The next
lowest rates, moreover, were those in the five immediately
preceeding years, when they were successively 17.9, 17'6,
16.9, 16.6, and 16.3 per 1,000."
There can be no doubt that this diminishing death-rate
implies growing healthiness of the population, and that we
may congratulate ourselves on the fact that the year 1888
was the healthiest year we have experienced since birthrates
and death-rates have been systematically recorded.
On the other hand, the diminishing birth-rate may possibly
be regarded by some persons as an unsatisfactory feature in
the returns. As a matter of fact, however, the diminish
ing birth-rate renders the diminishing death-rate more
significant of healthiness than would have been the case had
the birth-rate been high. For, on the one hand, as
children, in the first five years of life, always die in much
larger proportion than do persons in any equal period of
subsequent life, the births of any considerable number of
children in excess of the actual number born in 1888 would
have caused a more than proportionate increase in the
deaths, and consequently a general increase in the deathrate
; and, on the other hand, it can readily be shown by
calculation that the lower the birth-rate in relation to the
death-rate the higher is the average duration of life among
the population concerned. It need hardly be said that the
death-rate implies healthiness or unhealthiness only in so
far as it implies long or short average duration of life ; that,
for example, there can be no difference in the healthiness of
two localities, in one of which the death-rate is twice or even