“While in Rodney Street and Abercromby Wards, with upwards of 30,000 inhabitants, the mortality is below that of Birmingham—the most favoured in this respect of the large towns in England—in Vauxhall Ward, with a nearly equal amount of population, the mortality exceeds that which prevails in tropical regions. * * * * * 177 persons die annually in Vauxhall Ward for every 100 dying out of an equal amount of population in Rodney Street and Abercromby Wards.”
Vauxhall Ward is where the greater number of inhabitants dwell in cellars. Well may Dr. Duncan, in commenting on this difference of mortality in Vauxhall Ward and Rodney Street, declare that it is a fact “sufficient
to arouse the attention and stimulate the exertions of the most indifferent.”
The average age at death in the following classes is made out from all the deaths which took place in the Suburban, the Rural, and the Town districts of Sheffield in the three years, 1839, 1840, and 1841:
Gentry, professional persons, and their families | 47.21 |
Tradesmen and their families | 27.18 |
Artisans,Labourers, and their families | |
A. Employed in different kinds of trade andhandicraft common to all places | 21.57 |
B. Employed in the various descriptions ofmanufacture pursued in Sheffield and its neighbourhood | 19.34 |
Persons whose condition in life is undescribed | 15.04 |
Paupers in the Workhouse | 25.51 |
Farmers and their families | 37.64 |
Agricultural Labourers and their families | 30.89 |
In considering such statistics, the premature death of these poor people is not the saddest thing which presents itself to us, but the unhealthy, ineffectual, uncared-for, uncaring life which is the necessary concommitant of such a rapid rate of mortality.
Since the publication of the preceding Essay, Mr. Pusey’s “Poor in Scotland,” an abstract which has brought the evidence taken before the Scotch Poor Law Commission within short compass, has been published. This evidence is of a nature that cannot be passed by. We may think that such details are wearisome, but we must listen to them, if we would learn the magnitude of the evil. It is no use proceeding without a sufficient substratum of facts. Turning then to this abstract, we find one minister in Edinburgh saying,
“I visited a part of my parish on Friday last, and in all the houses I found persons destitute of food, and completely destitute of fuel; without an article of furniture; without beds or bedding, the inmates lying on straw.”
Another tells the Commissioners,
“the allowance generally made, is not sufficient to keep them (the outdoor pensioners) in existence at the lowest possible rate of living.”