The declining birth-rate / Herbert Thurston.

  • Herbert Thurston
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The declining birth-rate / Herbert Thurston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    table position of affairs among the industrial classes, and notably the textile workers, it is not to be denied that a still heavier responsibility rests with - those who belong to a higher level in the social scale. The birth-rate of Bournemouth (18:4) is lower than that of Halifax (18-7) or Huddersfield (19°3), and nearly as low as that of Bradford (17°95) ; while Brighton (21:2) treads close upon the heels of Blackburn (20°1) and Burnley (20°3).t All these seven towns, as Dr. Stevenson points out, “are either textile towns where the conditions of life impose a direct financial penalty on motherhood, or residential towns with an exceptionally large middle-class element in their population.” Un- doubtedly selfishness, or at any rate the gospel of comfort, seems to have infected the upper and middle classes most deeply of all. If we may take the number of children born in the families of married males as a standard of comparison, ac- cording to the occupations of their fathers, we find that the proportion works out thus—Upper and Middle Class 119, Skilled Workmen 153, Un- skilled Workmen 213; if we descend to more precise details, we have such pronounced examples as these—Textile Workers 125, Costers 175, Miners 230, Dock Labourers 231, Doctors, Solicitors, and Clergymen 102, the rates being calculated per 1,000 married males under 55 years. No doubt prudential motives weigh most pardonably in the case of the struggling professional classes, who feel that both ™ Report, p. 351. Eviden e of Dr. Stevenson.
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