On an annual census : with suggestions for annual stocktakings, and reports on them for economical and efficient administration by local authorities / by Sir Edwin Chadwick.

  • Chadwick, Edwin, 1800-1890.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On an annual census : with suggestions for annual stocktakings, and reports on them for economical and efficient administration by local authorities / by Sir Edwin Chadwick. 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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    value of a single lite, according to the late Dr. Farr, is £159. Now a gain of six per tliousaud would be a gain to Hastings of 300 lives, and the money gain on these lives would amount to £47,700 per annum. Take the case of the wage-classes: what will be the money-value of six years more of painless life and working ability to them ? To effect this money-saving there must be some expenditure for the attainment of at least a third room tenement, for which the workman's gains in wages by the gain in health will abundantly pay. Hastings, however, has already gained largely by such imperfect improvements in sanitation as have gone on with little system. In the three years 1847-9,1 learn from the Registrar-General's Office that the mean age of all who died here was 30.7 years, but in the three years 1885-7, the mean age of all who died was 37.5 years. There has, therefore, been a gain by sanitation, to all who have been born and lived here since 1847, of seven years. Now refer- ring to the accustomed death-rates as to which I have been challenged. The common death-rate accepted all over Europe at present is the rate per thousand of the population. From what has been shown as to the changes of population in the most crowded districts, it will be seen how defective that must be. It is like taking the mean age of death of the fixed population of a regiment, one fourth or third of which is changed. Never- theless, this rate, defective as it is, affords some indication of sanitary condition. On observing two districts, one in which the houses were well drained, the other in which they were ill- drained, I have found the variations in this imperfect death-rate correspond largely with their conditions. The examples I have elsewhere cited of changes of sanitary conditions are accom- panied by alterations in this death-rate, imperfect as it is. The annexed Table, I may submit, is an advance to greater statis- tical accuracy, which ought to be required authoritatively. It was made up after much study by Dr. Eichardson and myself, and implies separations into classes, the great differences in those classes, one contrasting with another, and displaying differences of condition belonging to each class, and requiring separate sanitary treatment. As the Table stands at present, in the absence of any examination on view of the body, and so far