The Sun.
London, England, 1848-02-11 00:00:00

1. That the advocates of sanitary reform. are justified irt
ussiimin two per cent. as the rate to •which the mor-
tality of all towns, ;:ni a fort' ori of the country at
large, may, by p: per sanitary measure s, reduced.
2. That there ure fair grounds for assuming for the
whole of the population a still more favourable rate of
mortality. 3. That the estimated annual sacrifice of
35,000 lives in England and Wales, and of upwards of
60,000 in the United Kingdom, is i tot greatly exag-
gerated •, and that a more moderate estimate of
30,000 for England and Wales, and .51,000 for the
United Kingdom, may be very safely assumed. 4. That
the estimated amount of sickness, like .the estimated

waste of life, expressed in years, has been soraewhat
exaggerated by the advocates of sanitary reform ; that
twenty cases of unnecessary sickness to one unnecessary
death, is a safer proportion to assume than twenty-
eight to one ; and that the total cases of unnecessary
sickness will have to be reduced accordingly."
The reviewer then goes on to say:—
" The annual waste of life and sacrifice of health
reduced to equivalents in pounds, shillings, and pence,
under the heads of sickness, funerals, and labour lost,
is represented by a grand total for England and \Vales
of 14,873,931/., or little less than 15,000, 000/. sterling.
Of this ener.esous total the metropolis contributes very
nearly 2,000,000/., and Lancashire upwards of 4,000,000/.
The standards of comparason employed in these calcu-
lations are the rate of mortality and average age at
death in the !nest h• ahhy registration district of each
county; the ages of the living being disregarded, and
the rates of sickness t•o death being taken at 1 to 28.
If this essential element of age had been .taken into
account, if tha more moderate standard of two per cent.
had been substituted for the perhaps too favourable
mortality of the most healthy district, and if the ratio
of 1 to 28 between deaths and cases of sickness had
been made to suffsr some abatement, it is not impossible
that these 15,000,000/. might be reduced to considerably
less than half. Possibly the tstal waste of money might
net exceed the sum annually raised in the shape of poor

rates."

Discarding the higher figures of these computations,
and taking them even at one-half, he would still be jus-
tified in asserting it as a truth, that thew were annually
30,000 lives sacritied which might be saved, and from
7,000,0001. to 8,000,0091. of unnecessary outlay, which, if
not avoided in future, would be attributable less to the
folly of the L-gislature than to its criminality. In a
subsequent par: of the same review, the writer thus pre-
—cceesl—

" The calculations published in the tables of the Health
of Towns Association embrace only three heads—fune-
rals, sickness, and labour wasted. Orphanage and
widowhood, which impose a perpetual burden upon the
poor-laws of about 50.000 women and children, and an
annual burden, which, though not yet ascertained, can-
not but bo considerable, are not taken into the account.
Then there is another enormous item of waste or mis-
appropriation of money, not contained in these tables—
namely, the sums squandered in the shape of defective,
and costly structural arrangements above and below?
ground. What all these barbarisms have cost and are,
costing us, it would be difficult to say ; but that they
amount to several millions a year no reasonable man can
doubt. We refer our readers to the reports of the Health of
Towns Commission, and the publication of the Health et..
Towns Association, for particulars. If they appear ex-
aggerated, let them halve or quarter every item, and
there will still remain the most remarkable expose ever
yet made of municipal and national extravagance. One
broad principle may be safely- enunciated in respect of
sanitary economics—that it costs more money to create
disease than to prevent it; and that there is not a single
structural arrangement chargeable with the production
of disease which is not also in itself an extravagance."
The return of the Registrar-General of the kingdom, for
the quarter ending December 31 last, had just been
presented, and in it he found the following statement:—
" The quarterly returns are obtained from 117 dis-
tricts, subdivided into 582 sub-districts. 36 districts
arc in the metropolis, and the remaining 81 comprise,
with some agricultural districts, the principal towns
and cities of England. The population was 6,612,800 in
1841. 57,925 deaths were registered in the last quarter.
The average number of deaths deduced from the returns
of the corresponding quarter of nine preceding years,
and corrected for increase of population, is 46,509.
There is, consequently, an excess of 11,376 deaths in.
the quarter. The deaths registered in the December
quarters of 1845, 1846, and 1847. are 39,291-
53.093-57,925; the mortality in the first is to that
of the last quarter nearly as 2 to 3. A slight increase in
the mortality was noted in the returns of the June quar-
ter, 1846; the mortality in the following hot summer,
when the potato crop failed, was excessive. Cholera
and diarrhoea prevailed epidemically. In the autumn of
1846, as well as the winter and sprina- quarters of 1847,
the mortality was still higher. Scurvy prevailed in the
beginning of the year, but in the summer the public
health appeared to be slightly improved. Epidemics of
typhus and influenza, however, set in, and have made the
mortality in the last quarter of 1847, higher than in any
quarter of any year since the new system of registration
commenced. About 16,000 a year, multiplied by 10, the
recoveries to each death, a calculation lower by 18 than
Dr. Playfair, we have yearly in England above 160,000
attacks of this loathsome disease which may be pre-
vented—a disease which does more to pauperise our po-
pulation, to fill our workhouses with widows and orphans
than any other, and for this reason—the typhus fever
for the most part attacks men and women in the prime
of life—from twtnty to forty. This is the age at which
the members of the working classes marry; and if the
father of a family is cut off, the widow and her children
are cast for support on the poor-rates. This is a painful
case of pauperism, and it becomes more so from its per-
manence. A widow so left with children is seldom mar-
ried a second time. From the books of the unions it
appears to take place only in one case out of thirty.
No wonder, than, the poor-law unions have to support
40,000 widows and 100.000 orphans year after year."
The evidence afforded by the medical statistics, that
typhus was a result of causes that could with certainty
be prevented, was overwhelming and conclusive. Dr.
Hall, of Preston, speaking of the sanitary condition of
the town, said—
The deaths of infants in Preston, stated by Dr.
Hall, under one year, were—well-conditioned streets, 15
deaths to 100 births ; middling-conditioned streets, 21
deaths to 100 births ; ill-conditioned streets, 38 deaths
to 100 births ; worst-conditioned streets, 44 deaths to
100 births. We see, then, and the remark holds good
not only in Preston, but also in other towns, that the
mortality is in proportion to the condition of the houses
in which the children live and the streets in which they
are situate, no less than 29
per cent, more of deaths
taking place in the worst than in the best conditioned
streets of Preston, the mortality being 15 and 44 per
ant."

The condition of Leicester and of Nottingham was ex-
emplified in the following manner :
In the parish of St. Margaret, Leicester, the average
age at death in 18-10 was—well-drained strcets, 23 ;
partially drained st.reets, 17k ; and streets without
drains, 131."