The next point claiming attention is the number of illegitimate children resulting from prostitution, based upon answers to the

Question. Were these children born in wedlock?

Legitimate children of married women 469
"""widows 358
Total legitimate 827
Illegitimate children of single women 490
"""married" 322
"""widows 279
Total illegitimate 1090
Aggregate 1917

The whole of the children borne by single women are, of course, illegitimate. Of the children of married women over forty per cent., and of the children of widows forty-four per cent. are illegitimate. Taking the total number of children of the three classes, and calculating upon this broad basis, it will appear that 1090 illegitimate children were born, giving an average of fifty-seven per cent.; or, to speak in plain terms, of every hundred children borne by women who are now prostitutes, forty-three were born before the mothers (married women or widows) had embraced this course of life, and the remaining fifty-seven were the fruit of promiscuous intercourse, liable physically to inherit the diseases of the mother, morally to endure the disgrace attached to their birth, and very probably to be reared in the midst of blasphemy, obscenity, and vice, to follow in the footsteps of their parents, and perpetuate the sin to which they owe their origin.

The excessive mortality among this class of children is developed in the following replies to the

Question. Are these children living or dead?

Living children of single women 133
"""married" 334
"""widows 265
Total living 732
Dead children of single women 357
"""married" 457
"""widows 371
Total dead 1185
Aggregate 1917

The ratio of mortality will be as follows:

Childrenofsingle women 73percent.
""married" 58""
""widows 59""
Average on the total number 62""

or more than six deaths for every ten children born. The average infantile mortality of New York City for three years is,