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.

  • Duncan, W. H. (William Henry), 1805-1863.
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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    balanced by the influonce of other causes which are unfor- tunately present and in active operation. If the conditions noticed in the former part of this Paper really contribute to the high rate of mortality in Liverpool, we ought to find other large towns (whose rate of mortality is lower) better situated in those respects. And there can be little doubt that such is the case. I shall contrast, in as far as I have the means of doing so, the condition of Liverpool with that of Manchester, whose mortality is the highest, (excepting Liverpool), and of Bir- mingham, whose mortality is the lowest, of all the large provincial towns in England. A perusal of the evidence taken by the Select Committee on the Health of Towns will satisfy any one that in Liverpool and Manchester— which are the most unhealthy towns in the kingdom—the state of the dwellings of the working classes is also worse than in any other town in England; but that in this re- spect, as well as in point of mortality, Liverpool is still lower in the scale than Manchester.* In the first place, Liverpool appears to have a larger amount of Cellar population than- any other town. After a careful investigation of the cellar residences both here and in Manchester, by the Statistical Society of the latter town, about seven years ago, they estimated the propor- tion of the working classes inhabiting cellars, in Liverpool, at 20 per cent., in Manchester at II3 per cent., and in Salford, at only 8 per cent. In Birmingham, the most healthy of all the large towns, it appears that there are no cellar residents whatever. The Committee of Physicians and Surgeons who drew up the Report on the Sanitary condition of that town state:—“Our inquiries have not enabled us to discover a single example of a cellar used as * After quoting Liverpool as affording an example of the evils in question in an aggravated form, the Committee state that in Manchester “ the habitations of the working classes are described as better than those of Liverpool.”—Report on Health of Towns, p. x.