Abstract of the proceedings of the public meeting held at Exeter Hall, Dec. 11, 1844.

  • Health of Towns Association (London, England)
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Abstract of the proceedings of the public meeting held at Exeter Hall, Dec. 11, 1844. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    among the people? To solve the difficulty they must point to particular districts of the country, note tire statistical facts, and draw their inferences. The mortality in Lancashire thirty years ago was one in forty-six, or less than the general average of England at the present moment. Now the mortality in that county was one in thirty-six. Still there was a difference in the mortality as regarded different districts in the same county. The value of life in Ulverstone, for instance, is stated by Dr. Playfair to be double what it is in Manchester—Man¬ chester which, as he says, enjoys the unenviable notoriety of being the second unhealthy town in the kingdom, and where the mortality was, upon the most favourable estimate, 1 in 28. There were eight counties in England in which the average value of life stood at present higher than it was 30 years ago, and they were counties in which the least social change of the kind alluded to had taken place : they were Devonshire, Cornwall, Dorsetshire, Hereford¬ shire, Sussex, Lincolnshire, Hampshire, and the North Riding of Yorkshire. He would briefly advert to one other point—namely, the amount of instruction possessed by the people; and he found by calculations drawn from the marriage certi¬ ficates signed, that in this respect Lancaster stood one of the lowest. The mean of those who could not write their own names in Lancashire was 52 out of 100; and the women still lower, being 07 out of 100. But then this was upon the whole county of Lancaster, and part borders upon Westmoreland, where the instruction is amongst the highest. Take from the Report of the recent Commission for Inquiring into the state of Large Towns, testimony as to the state of that town in which the manufacturers which give it a peculiar character exist in the greatest proportion to the general population. Ashton-under- Lyne: —With respect to Ashton, Mr. Coulthart reports to the Commissioners that only 20 persons out of 100—12 men and 8 women—could now sign their marriage certi¬ ficate ; whereas, by looking back, he finds that 80 years ago, 70 out of 100 had then that species of instruction. This was not the result which, without gross neglect some¬ where, one would have expected to have followed from enterprise waiting upon capital. Then turn to the eight counties already quoted as still retaining an average value of life above what the general average of England was 30 years ago. In all of these—Boeotian though some of