Contributions to vital statistics : especially designed to elucidate the rate of mortality, the laws of sickness, and the influences of trade and locality on health, derived from an extensive collection of original data, supplied by Friendly Societies, and proving their too frequent instability / by F.G.P. Neison.

F. G. P. Neison

Date:: [1845]

Credit: Contributions to vital statistics : especially designed to elucidate the rate of mortality, the laws of sickness, and the influences of trade and locality on health, derived from an extensive collection of original data, supplied by Friendly Societies, and proving their too frequent instability / by F.G.P. Neison. 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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to judge of the value of life and the influence of locality on the residue of the population from calculations involving the consideration of all the lives generally, than it would be just to compare the value of life in the residue in the preceding illustration with town life, and draw the conclusion that life in the rural districts was of less value than in the town districts; for in both cases a factitious value is assigned, by being mixed up with a favourable class. 'Shorn the preceding remarks it is evident that in particular occu- pations, even in the Rural Districts, life is of less value than in others. Those occupations cannot be said to be less healthy from the objec- tionable features peculiar to large towns and cities, for they must be supposed under very favourable circumstances for prolonged life. From a table presenting the expectation of life in sixteen trades* in the Rural Districts, selected at random, without any previous know- ledge as to whether they were healthy or otherwise!*; it appears that the value of life is less than the average for the whole Rural Districts; and labourers were before shown to be more healthy than the average results. It is therefore clear, that if a given district were chiefly made up of the class whose lives are above the average value, or of those below it, that the general results for that district would be of high or low value accordingly. A very small portion of the population in either the Town or City Districts can follow agricultural pursuits; and therefore the standard of life in those districts will be lowered in consequence of that circum- stance alone; but on further examination it will be found that the comparative value of life in those districts is not only lowered in con- sequence of the absence of many of the most healthy occupations common to the Rural Districts, but that it is still further decreased by the presence of some of the most unhealthy employments, not to be found, or at least to a very limited extent, in the Rural Districts. In other words, the effect of the occupations is such, that if the same people were placed in the Rural Districts, no matter over how much surface they were spread, in order to avoid the influence supposed to connect itself with the congregation of large numbers into towns, still the mortality would be much higher among the people thus con- ditioned, than among the average of the rural population in ordinary circumstances. If the view brought forward be correct, that the mortality of towns and cities is increased from the existence of a high proportion of trades which are in themselves unhealthy, independent of the influence of the locality, it should follow that the difference found by a comparison of the rate of mortality of a given number of trades in one district, with that of the same trades in another district, should be less than the difference between the rates of mortality for the general results of the same districts. If the differences of the decennial periods from 10 to 70 in the general results for rural and town districts be taken, the sum of the differences will be found to amount to 19*3299 years; but * Table H, No. 4, p. 37, “ Contributions.” t Namely, plumbers, painters and glaziers, weavers, butchers, millwrights, stonemasons, cabinet-makers, printers, bakers, bricklayers, wheelwrights, tailors, cordwainers and shoemakers, sawyers, clerks, carpenters and joiners, and black- smitas.

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