[15]. 1 heart disease, 1 dropsy.
[16]. The approximate number of deliveries, 6396, given elsewhere, is rather under the mark than over, as will be seen by this Table, and is taken in order to be on the safe side. For, up to the three last years, the numbers are rather estimated than reckoned from the records. The total annual average deliveries calculated from different monthly records, i. e. 10 years of months = 500 in round numbers—1858–1867.
The three years 1868–9–70, for which only there are accurate records, speak for themselves; and they show that the death-rate is marvellously low: not higher than in the healthy districts of England.
[17]. An attempt has been made in certain cases to account for the high death-rates of lying-in hospitals from the large proportion of unmarried women admitted. This opinion is directly contradicted by the experience of Liverpool workhouse, where out of 1,401 deliveries of women, 936 of whom, or two-thirds, were unmarried, there were only 6 deaths = 4·2 per 1,000 death-rate.
[18]. In Lambeth and St. Pancras the wards are generally full.
[19]. These arrangements are commonly the same in civil lying-in institutions.
[20]. I call a midwife a woman who has received such a training, scientific and practical, as that she can undertake all cases of parturition, normal and abnormal, subject only to consultations, like any other accoucheur. Such a training could not be given in less than two years.
I call a midwifery nurse a woman who has received such a training as will enable her to undertake all normal cases of parturition, and to know when the case is of that abnormal character that she must call in an accoucheur.
No training of six months could enable a woman to be more than a midwifery nurse.
[21]. In some London workhouses it is yet larger.