Age-periods and Mortality.—The table shews at a glance that there are more than double as many deaths in the selected towns as in the rural counties—22,000 as against 10,000, whilst the manufacturing counties stand at 17,000. It must, however, be observed that this last group contains the textile districts and various other typically unhealthy trade areas, so that it is scarcely a fair criterion. An examination of more detailed statistics which have been reduced to a tabular shape shew, as the Registrar-General points out, that in the rural counties and the three selected towns the mortality is at its maximum in the first week, falls heavily in the second week, remains at much the same level during the third week, and then shews a fresh very considerable decline in the fourth. To summarise his conclusions as to the points of likeness between counties and towns: “Both shew an excessively high mortality in the earliest days of life, which becomes less and less as days, weeks, and months pass by, until the seventh or eighth month has elapsed, when the decline either is arrested or becomes very much smaller. In both the mortality is so high in the first three days, or even in the entire first week, that, were it maintained without diminution, every infant would die without nearly completing one year of its existence.” But now coming to the points of difference. We have seen in the first place that the town rate is more than twice as high as the country. But the town rate is not merely higher for the whole period, but higher for each fraction of the year. Moreover, the town rates are most in excess of the country ones, not in the earliest weeks or months of infancy, but in the later months. “In the first week of life, the town rate exceeds the rural rate by 23 per cent., in the second week by 64 per cent., in the third week by 83 per cent., and in the fourth week by 97 per cent. The same result comes out when the rates for successive months in the counties and towns are examined. In the first month the town mortality is 27 per cent. above the rural rate, in the second month 121 above it, and the excess then goes on increasing until in the sixth month it amounts to no less than 273 per cent. This is the month in which the difference is greatest, though it remains throughout the rest of the year at a not very much lower point.” This progressive increase is a most significant fact, and it is much to be wished that instead of concluding his examination at the limit of one year of age, the Registrar had continued it, say up to five years, so that he might have been able to form some notion of the further loss of life which falls upon the children in the districts where their mothers are employed in the mills and factories. There is not space here to reproduce the two tables in which the Registrar-General enumerates the causes of death in the rural and town districts, together with the ages at which death takes place. But these tables are of such extreme importance that it may be well to compare some of the more general causes of death.

Causes.Rural Districts.Preston, Leicester, and Blackburn.
Premature Birth13812279
Diarrhœal Diseases4813961
Convulsions and Diseases of the Nervous System13813776
Diseases of Respiratory Organs21053701
Atrophy17382734

The following table shews the period of death in the two districts respectively:—

Age.Rural Districts.Preston, Leicester, and Blackburn.
1 Month34884947
2 Months9852130
3 ”7072049
4 ”6731967
5 ”6181749
6 ”4611584
7 ”4831475
8 ”4831226
9 ”4541317
10 ”4761220
11 ”4551110
12 ”4341029

Relation of Married Women’s labour to Infant Mortality. Dr. Tatham’s Evidence.—The most striking difference between the rural districts and the selected towns is in the case of diarrhœa, which, taken with enteritis, shews a mortality seven times as great in towns as in the country. These figures tell their own tale, but it may be well to add the testimony of Dr. Tatham, for many years the medical officer for Manchester and Salford, as given before the labour Commission. “In the year 1881 my attention was first seriously directed to the employment of young mothers in factories, in the course of my investigations concerning the causes of our abnormally heavy infant mortality, Salford being one of the great English towns in which infant mortality was year after year notoriously excessive. As a result of anxious inquiry, extending over many years, I was, and still am, convinced that very much of that excessive mortality was due to infant neglect, consequent on the withdrawal of maternal care within a few weeks of the birth of the children. In consequence of this practice the infants were frequently consigned to the care of some ignorant neighbour, or were nursed at home by an older child of the family. The children were artificially and often improperly fed, and a heavy death-roll was the ultimate result.”

Questioned by the Chairman as to the time, in his opinion, a mother should remain at home after the birth of the child, Dr. Tatham said, “I should not be consistent if I said less than six months.”

“That of course in your opinion would have a very important influence upon the rate of mortality?” “I think it would.”

“And upon the nurture of the children?” “I think so.”