The Education Act was indirectly producing some good results as regarded the health of the rising generation.
A most marked improvement had come over the mortality of children at school ages. Mortality has lessened—
| 5–10 | years | 30 | per cent. |
| 10–15 | „ | 32 | „ |
| 15–20 | „ | 30 | „ [172] |
due to the fact that children had been gathered into the schools from their crowded and insanitary homes, and had thus escaped some of the perils of disease.
And the Medical Officer of Health for Lambeth referred to this same subject in his report for 1886:—
“The children of the pauper and mendicant are withdrawn from the atmosphere of vice and intemperance to which their fathers had become acclimatised, and are placed under supervision in the schoolroom….”
Some slight improvement there was also as regarded the mortality of children under five years, though in many parishes it was still fearfully high.
In Mile-End-Old-Town, for instance, in 1890 the deaths under five years amounted to 51 per cent. of all deaths. In Deptford district in 1890–1 they amounted to 50 per cent. In Bermondsey in 1889 they amounted to 52 per cent. In St. Olave, Southwark, in 1888–9 to 49½ per cent. In St. Mary, Newington, in 1890, very slightly under 50 per cent.
Infantile mortality was becoming of greater concern than ever as the birth-rate was showing a decided diminution—that for 1889 being the lowest on record since 1849.