Note 21 — IV.—COMPARATIVE CHANCES OF LIFE IN DIFFERENT CLASSES OF THE COMMUNITY.

“Out of 100 deaths in the 16th century, 25·92 were children in their first year; in the 17th century, 23·72; in the 18th century, 20·12; in 1801–13, they were 16·57; and in 1814–33, they were 13·85.” In Liverpool, the number of children which in the year 1840 died under one year of age was no less than 23 per cent., or what it was in Geneva in the 17th century. In the county of Wilts where the proportionate mortality is 1 in 58, the deaths of children in the first year were 16 per cent. Dr. Griffin, in a report on the sanitary condition of the population of Limerick, where the births appear to bear such proportions to the marriages as they appear to have borne in Geneva in the earliest periods, namely, of five children to a marriage, and more in the worst-conditioned districts, makes an important observation on the subject: “I find that as the poor nurse their own children, there is in general an interval of about two years between the birth of one child and that of the next; but if the child dies early on the breast, this interval will be much shorter; and if this occurs often, there will be a certain number born as it were for the purpose of dying; and these being soon replaced, the same number may still be preserved as if there had been few or no deaths, or only the ordinary number.” Of these 55 per cent. died.