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alone one could determine relative healthiness or, in other
words, relative length of life. My object was to show that
the death-rate per se gave no such information; that the
death-rate at different times, or in different localities might
vary within very wide limits, and yet such variations might
be unassociated with any corresponding variations in the
average duration of life; and that in order to attach any
accurate value to the death-rate, it was necessary to
compare it with the birth-rate. Thus, to give an example.
A death-rate of 10 per 1,000 (such as not unfrequently
occurs in Dulwich) is very low; a death-rate of 40 per
1,000, on the other hand (which could only occur in London
during the prevalence of virulent epidemic diseases) is very
high; and if these rates prevailed uniformly, one in one
district, one in another district, in both of which there was
an annual birth-rate of 35 per 1,000, the average duration
of life in the former population would be 50.73 years,
whereas in the latter it would be only 26.64, or in other
words, the one district, as judged of by length of life, would
be nearly twice as healthy as the other. But if the lower
death-rate prevailed in a population in which the birth-rate
was 55 per 1,000, and the higher death-rate prevailed in a
population in which the birth-rate was only 15 per 1,000,
the average duration of life would in both cases be equal,
and amount to 38.7 per 1,000. If we apply the same
reasoning to the facts of our own Parish, the respective
birth-rates and death-rates which prevailed in 1891, would
imply, in the sub-district of Camberwell a mean duration of
life of 45 years; in Peckham, of 40 years; in St. George's, of
37 years; in Dulwich, of 94 years; and in the Parish taken
generally of 41 years. I need scarcely add that the above
results are not to be accepted as representing the actual facts;