Volume 1

First report.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on the State of Large Towns.
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First report. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/428 (page 12)
    Xll the habits and condition of the population, thus possess- ing the best means of insuring approximation to accuracy. As an example, of a town chiefly commercial, the Report relating to Liverpool, by Dr. Duncan,1 physician to the Liverpool Dispensary, shows the great extent of mortality, of which the local authorities and the principal inhabitants appear to have been, up to a recent period, unaware, but which has been fully established by the returns in the registers ol deaths. Competent witnesses concur in asciib- ing such an extent of mortality to the general want of drainage and cleansing, ill-conditioned dwellings, defec- tive ventilation, scanty supplies of water, and to other causes capable of remedy. As an instance of a population almost entirely engaged in manufactures, whose increasing numbers have also been accompanied by a progressive diminution of the mean age at death, as appears from an examination of the paro- chial and other registers, we submit the Report upon the Sanatory State of Preston, by the Rev. Mr. Clay,3 and a committee of the inhabitants of that town. The Report of Mr. Hawksley,4 on the Condition of the Labouring Population of the Town of Nottingham, affords an example of widely different rates of mortality prevalent in different districts, and among different classes in the same town. The returns obtained from the Ecclesall Bierlow Re- gistration District of the mortality, as well as the rate of the births, which obtains amongst the artisans chiefly engaged in the manufacture of cutlery at Sheffield,5 ex- hibits the different rates of mortality prevalent among artisans of similar occupations, when resident in the closer parts of the town, or in the more open suburbs. To afford further information with respect to the exten- 1 Vol, i., p. , p. 122.