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11
career after having passed the perils of infancy
elsewhere ; indeed, your City is ever receiving fresh
accessions of vigorous life in the very prime of youth.
This relieves the metropolis from a weight of infant
mortality that would otherwise press heavily upon
it; and to learn, therefore, how great is the deathrate
of your infant population, you must, as in other
cases, compare the proportion of the dead to that of
the living. In doing this, we find that while in
England the mortality of children under five years of
age is about 68 in the 1,000, and in country districts
only 37 ; in the City of London it is 82, and in the
western division of it, it is 104. This represents
a mortality that is 52 per cent. over the average of
England, and 181 per cent. over that of the country.
At first sight you may not perhaps perceive the
magnitude of this fact; but when you reflect on it,
and consider that for every single death that should
occur among the children, there are nearly three
deaths, and that the surplus mortality is due, in a
great degree, to causes over which you have control,
you will then see how important is the matter, and
will, I doubt not, be ready to admit that there is an
urgent necessity for prompt and active interference.
And then again, if we look to the mortality of the
adult population, and compare it with what it should
be in a healthy district, we shall notice that in every
part of this metropolis the death-rate of the people
is very large. Taking the mortality of 15 in the