On the physical causes of the high rate of mortality in Liverpool : read before the Literary and Philosophical Society, in February and March, 1843 / by W.H. Duncan.

  • William Henry Duncan
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the physical causes of the high rate of mortality in Liverpool : read before the Literary and Philosophical Society, in February and March, 1843 / by W.H. Duncan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    of population in Rodney Street and Abercromby Wards. Should not this simple fact be sufficient to arouse the at- tention and stimulate the exertions of the most indifferent ? It is calculated that about 1,500 lives are annually lost by shipwreck, on the British coast, and not a single wreck occurs without exciting a large amount of public sympathy. These lives are lost by the decrees of Providence—by causes which perhaps no human foresight could avert; and yet we look idly on, while, on a small spot of that coast less than two square miles in extent, hundreds of our fellow townsmen perish, yearly, by causes which in a great measure it is within our power to remedy or remove. And here I must again beg to guard myself from the chance of its being supposed that I hold the defects which have been noticed, as chargeable with the whole of the excess of mor- tality in Liverpool, or of the excess of mortality in one dis- trict of Liverpool over another. Part of the excessive mortality of Vauxhall Ward over Rodney Street and Aber- cromby Wards must be ascribed to the different character of the population of the two districts, (although in this last nearly one-fourth of the inhabitants reside in courts or cellars, of a superior construction) ; and if it can be esta- blished that in other towns, where the mortality is lower. “ unfairly dealt by” in the Report on the Sanitary condition of England ; that “ a large proportion of deaths among the poor arose among parties who came into the town ready to perish that “ the Irish came here sick, and died, and parties came down from the country sick, made this a back door to Ireland, and died here.” Now, there can he no doubt whatever that much of the excessive mortality in Liverpool is due to the Irish resident here, hut there can he equally little doubt that the number of Irish leaving Liverpool in bad health much exceeds the num- ber of those who arrive here in a similar predicament. Irish patients at the Dispensary frequently date their illness from their arrival in Liverpool, (a confirmation of the noxious influence of our courts and cellars); and when attacked with fatal diseases (particularly consump- tion), many of them return to Ireland, in the expectation that “ the air of their native country ” will restore their health.—The same gentleman is reported to have said that the high rate of infantile mortality was owing to the “ great difficulty in getting them (the Irish) to vaccinate their children.” This explanation is sufficiently refuted by the fact that the deaths from small pox in Liverpool, since the Registration Act came into force, have been fewer than in Manchester, where the general mor- tality is less,—the relative numbers being 1 in 522 of the population annually, in Liverpool, and 1 in 501 in Manchester.]