The infantile death-rate did not diminish as the decade proceeded. In Islington in 1875–6 the infant mortality was “much about the same” as it had been twelve years previously.
In Kensington it had increased to 46·3 in 1878; in St. George-the-Martyr to 57·7 per cent.; in St. Pancras in 1877–8, of 5,068 deaths, 2,212 (or 45·6 per cent.) were of children under five.
The Medical Officer of Health for Poplar wrote (1877–8):—
“The deaths of children under five years have been more than half the total of deaths—truly a ‘massacre of the Innocents.’”
The Medical Officer of Health for Islington wrote (1880):—
“The number of deaths of children under one year is still painfully large…. Children seem to be born for little else than to be buried.”
Passing from record to comment, there are some striking passages in the reports of the Medical Officers of Health.
Thus the Medical Officer of Health for Paddington wrote:—
“… Of infantile mortality one is tempted to ask whether the provision of so much life, such a prodigality of being, to be followed so soon by an almost Pharaoh sacrifice of it, is necessary to the multiplication of the race.”
And the Medical Officer of Health for St. Marylebone (1877):—