Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1869-07-15
Mortality Among Mormon Children.

A Salt Lake letter says: This city
already shows it's bad effect ON the off.
spring. The site is 4, 400 feet above The
level of the sea, in a dry and bracing
climate, equally free from extremes of
heat and colo, and consequently it should
be one of the healthiest cities in the
world. Exactly the reverse is the fact
The death rate of all ages, is little
more than twice that of the State of
Oregon, and greater than that of New
York or New Orleans. When we come to
children the disparity is still more fright
full. By actual statistics it is shown that
the mortality among children is greater
in Salt Lake City than many other in
America, except New Orleans and the
death rate of Utah is only exceeded by
that of Louisiana. The Mormons have
greatly exaggerated the population of
this place, which really contains little
less than 800 souls, and in this small
number the sections report for October
last, the healthiest month in the year,
gives the interments at sixty, of which
forty-four were children. Last year was
unusually healthy, and yet the death
rate exceeds that of any other State or
Territory west of the Mississippi. The
Mormons explain this by saying that
there people are generally poor and ex-
posed to hardships, but much of that
poverty is directly traceable to their
religion. Another sad fact is the gen.
eral neglect of medical care, or rather q
general tendency to run into wild and
absurd schemes of doctoring. They claim
that ''laying on of hands and the prayer
of faith will heal the sick, and yet no
people within my knowledge are so
given to "FhOmpsonism," "steam doc
toring," ''yarb medicine" and every
other irregular mode of treating the
sick. But few days ago three young
children died in the Seventeenth Ward
of scarlet fever. In neither case was a
physician called the Bishop came and
Laid on.hands, with the holy anointing,"
and an old woman treated two of them
with mild palliative, such as is used
for a sore throat.
If the patients live, after such treat
ment, is miracle and if they die, it is
1.-THE will of the Lord" Two-thirds of
the pOlygamists do not and cannot attend
properly to their children. Heber c.
Kimball had sixty-three sons, of whom
only forty-eight are now living. The
bishop of our ward, the Fourteenth, has
thirty childrenliving and nearlytwenty
dead. Joseph Smith had half dozen
PAA SteA "ANSo Out LWc oOn5 SulfltCu
him-both of his legal wife,
There are five men in this city who
have, together, seventy wives; they
have, all told less than a hundred and
fifty children.
\ Mormon graveyard is the most
melancholy sight on earth. One bishop
here has seventeen children buried in
one row, and the longest grave is not
over four feet If the men have but
the common feelings of humanity, how
fearfully they are punished for their
crime of pelygamy. Brigham's children
are generally healthy, except that the
girls mostly have weak eyes, and two of
them are nearly blind; but they are
well fed, housed, and clothed. But such
is the exception, and could mention a
dozen men whose houses are full of wo-
men, bat their children are in the grave.