Such has been the case; and it illustrates the necessity of appealing to cyclical averages for correct intelligence as to the healthiness of a population. To my mind the increased mortality of this year does not indicate any deterioration of the City in respect of sanitary matters under your control; it shows merely that the death-rate, which must be considered our present average for the City, is in truth higher than that which favourable circumstances, foreign to your jurisdiction, last year permitted us to attain.
Looking to the total mortality of the last three years (the period for which I have had the honour of serving your Commission), I find that 9493 deaths have taken place; which, the mean population of the time being 129,922, gives an average rate of 24·35 deaths per thousand per annum. This accords very nearly with a death-rate (24·36) deduced from the septennial period 1838-44, during which (according to the Registrar-General) 22,127 deaths occurred in a population estimated at 129,739.[62]
[62] Since 1841, when the Census gave these figures, the limits of the West London Union have been slightly altered. The Inner Temple and Barnard’s Inn have been added to it, while part of St. Sepulchre’s parish has been taken away.
Assuming our City mortality to be accurately represented by these averages, I need not inform your Hon. Court that such a death-rate is unduly high. I have already, in previous Reports, laid before you the materials for measuring its excess,—materials which seem to show that our existing death-rate is nearly the double of that which better circumstances have elsewhere rendered attainable.[63]
[63] The death-rate to which I particularly refer in the text, and which I [cited] in my last year’s report, is that of a large district in Northumberland, numbering 27,628 inhabitants, where, during the seven years 1838-44, the mortality was at the rate of only 14 per thousand per annum; and even in this comparatively low proportion a very distinct share might still be called preventable deaths.
It is not to the City alone of metropolitan districts that this high mortality belongs. Unhappily it affects the entire Metropolis; and we may find other towns in England, and still more on the Continent, where the death-rate is higher than under your jurisdiction. Yet your Hon. Court will not doubt that the standard to be adopted for your estimate of healthiness ought to be the lowest known death-rate; that every avoidable death represents an evil to society; and that, if a mortality of 12, or 13, or 14 per thousand per annum can be reached for one mixed population, there is ample room for discontent among any other population, which finds itself doomed to perish at double the rate of the first.
3. In the third table[64] all the deaths of the last three years are enumerated in a form which may enable you to compare one year with another, and one sub-district with another, in respect of their several contributions to the total mortality.
[64] This information is now included in the Quinquennial Synopsis, [Appendix, No. II.]
4. In the fourth table[65] are classified, according to the ages at which they occurred, 9476[66] deaths of the last three years. This table is arranged in a manner to display its results—(1) for each year separately, and (2) for each Union separately, in order that you may observe what local or annual differences have obtained as to the ages of chief mortality. You will notice that in 3469 instances, nearly three-eighths of the whole, death has befallen children under five years old. Children at this age constitute about a tenth part of the population of the City. They accordingly die at about four times the rate which would fall to them as equal participators in the average mortality of the district. The [next table] will throw some light on this disproportionate excess of infant deaths.
[65] Now embodied in [Table VIII.]