On the best modes of representing accurately, by statistical returns, the duration of life, and the pressure and progress of the causes of mortality amongst different classes of the community, and amongst the populations of different districts and countries / by Edwin Chadwick.

Edwin Chadwick

Date:: [1843?]

Credit: On the best modes of representing accurately, by statistical returns, the duration of life, and the pressure and progress of the causes of mortality amongst different classes of the community, and amongst the populations of different districts and countries / by Edwin Chadwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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the various stages of adult life. It will be hereafter seen, from the in- crease in the average ages of the living which appears to have taken place in the United Kingdom since the last census, when the ages were taken, that this increase of health in certain classes of adults, is probably a considerable element of the increase in the numbers of the population. The increase in the numbers of the population of any district may have arisen from immigration. The returns uudcr the last census of the birth- places of the inhabitants shows that in the towns this has been a very considerable element of increase, and in some instances there is strong reason for believing that it must have lieen the only one. There are a few places where the population has remained stationary, aud the increase having been general, differences of the different rales of increase in different places, will, I apprehend be found not to affect in any considerable degree returns of the average ages of death, as the best available means of comparison of the pressure of the causes of mortality between place and place. But in the comparisons made between town and country, the increase of population in the towns having been made up chiefly by immigration, and that mostly of young unmarried persons , and in all cases of persons of a more vigorous constitution, this increase of population, as nlready stated, must increase the mean ages of death beyond the term properly due to the native town populations. I cannot, however, permit to pass unchallenged generally assumed “laws ’’ of a heavy mortality as being necessarily and indiscriminately ap- plicable to every stage of infant life. It has been shown, in the Sanatory Report, that in the same districts where one-fourth of the children of the gentry died, more than one-half the children of the working classes have died, and this excess of deaths amongst the poorer classes was traced to preventible causes. The experience of Geneva, and other places which may be cited, 1 submit disprove the assumption that a large mass of human life is necessarily created to be immediately destroyed. Yet on this assumption it has been objected that the mean ages of death can only be used as a standard where the ages of the living are ascertained; for that where there is a young population, there must be a greater mortality than where there is an old population. This objection substitutes the effect for the cause ; it says, “ There must be an exces- sive mortality, because there is an excessively young populationthe facts, wheu investigated, I apprehend, reverse the sequence, and show that there is an excessively young and burthensome population, because there is an excessive mortality. The excessive mortality slaughtering infants quickens births, from physical laws already explained :—sweeping aw'tty adults of the marriageable age before their time, it opens places of work and subsistence, to be occupied by other young adults, and quickens marriages with the young; it sweeps away adults before they attain old age, and thus produces a young population in large numbers. A low average age of death, if continued for any length of time, produces, and is found generally to indicate, the existence of young population. I have ex- amined, with a view to its introduction as an element of vital statistics, the mean ages of the living amongst whom the deaths returned occur. Though the pressure of the causes of mortality affects the ages of the entire living population, it does not, so far as yet has lieen observed, affect them in any perceptible coincidence with the mean ages of death. The apparent reason for this is, that in the worst-conditioned districts the

On the best modes of representing accurately, by statistical returns, the duration of life, and the pressure and progress of the causes of mortality amongst different classes of the community, and amongst the populations of different districts and countries / by Edwin Chadwick.

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