On the comparative mortality of English districts : an address / by H. Franklin Parsons.

  • Parsons, H. Franklin (Henry Franklin), 1846-1913.
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On the comparative mortality of English districts : an address / by H. Franklin Parsons. 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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    rates in different counties is increased ; for the agricultural counties, which have low death-rates, have a larger pro- portion of elderly inhabitants, as compared with the urban and industrial counties; and hence the result of the correction is to reduce the comparative mortality figure in the former, and to increase it in the latter. The order of the counties is also somewhat altered : Rutlandshire comes first with a rate of 13.2; Huntingdonshire, Cambridge- shire and Dorsetshire also have rates below 14.0, and eight other counties have rates below 15.0. On the other hand, the rate in Lancashire is increased to 23.6, and the West Riding, London and Durham all have rates above 20. A line drawn across England, from the mouth of the Severn to the Wash, will roughly divide the counties of high mortality from those of low mortality. The Registrar-General’s divisions I to V, viz., London, South Eastern, South Midland, Eastern and South Western, con- taining 22 counties or vice-counties, lie to the S.E. of this line, and divisions VI to XI, viz., the West Midland, North Midland, North Western, Yorkshire, Northern and Wales, containing 23 counties or vice-counties, lie to the N.W. of it. All the counties with crude death-rates under 16, with the exception of Westmoreland, lie to the S.E. of this line, and all the counties with death-rates above 18 lie to the N.W. of the same line, except London and Cornwall. Speaking generally, the counties which are purely agricultural and contain no large towns have low death-rates ; this is so with Rutlandshire in the North Midland, and with Westmoreland in the Northern division ; though other counties in those divisions, which contain large towns and manufacturing or mining populations, have much higher death-rates. On the other hand, the counties which have a high death-rate are those which contain a predominant urban population, and especially a manufacturing or mining one, e.g., London, which is wholly urban, with a density of population in 1891 of 56.5 persons to an acre, and Lancashire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, the West Riding of Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland, Monmouthshire, and South Wales, with their great towms and populous mining and manufacturing communities. It may be remarked that a high mortality prevails in those parts of the kingdom in which there is a considerable Celtic element in the population, as Wales and Monmouthshire, and to a less extent in Cornwall, and also in the large towns of Lancashire in which there are many Irish, as Liverpool and Preston. It maybe remarked,