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25
The foregoing tables give us the means of comparing
the deaths in the two districts of our parish, the population
of both being sufficiently similar. The Charing
Cross district, which is inhabited by a wealthier
class than that of Long Acre, and also contains
a smaller number of courts and small streets occupied
by the labouring classes exhibits a smaller proportion
of deaths in children under 5 years and also from
epidemic diseases. We all know that the unhappy
conditions under which the poor live in crowded dwellings,
where often a large family live in a single room
far too small for them, and consequently in an atmosphere
most injurious to health, and especially deleterious
in its operation on disease, in retarding recovery, and
too often preventing recovery altogether.
The same facts are shewn by comparing the proportion
of deaths in children, and from zymotic diseases,
in those courts and streets of the two districts which
are most populous, with the better classes of streets,
where but few poor people live. The conclusion we
arrive at is that among the labouring classes a larger
proportion of children die from the same kind of disease
than among the better housed classes, and that the
conditions under which multitudes are obliged to live
become accessory to the destruction of large numbers
of our people, not only children but adults, who when
attacked by ordinary diseases too often fall victims, from
the wretched ventilation and poisonous atmosphere
they are obliged to breathe in the pent-up rooms where
they live.
The death-rate of St. Martin's is very high, but