The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-02-01

2
 London's birth rate, so is there, also, 1T : it's death rate. Despite lung-choking
 fogs, which are responsible, it is said
 for the demise of three thousand Lon
 doners every winter, and notwithstand-
 ing the smallpox scare and other incl
 pient epidemies, London has still mor-
 tality-table which might be envied by
 the other large cities of this country
 and which, also, makes a better show
 ing thanthos eof Paris or New York
 With pardonable exultation one of the
 London dailies asks why do Londoners
 go far away in search of health, when
 those who live in the suburbs of this
 city enjoy conditions superior to many
 of the boasted health-resorts? Any one
 with centenarian ambitions should set
 tie, says this writer in the outer ring of
 Greater London, and even the inner
 ring, he says, is as healthy, according to
 statistics, as most of the watering
 places.
 But this superiority of London as q
 health center is held by some to be a big
 thing on paper only. Figures will lie,
 they remind us The low death rate is
 deceptive for it's results, not from the
 healthfulness of London, but from the
 fact that there is a continuous tide of
 delicate natives ebbing out of the me-
 tropolis and q greater tide of the best
 blood of the country always flowing
 into it. Indeed, say they, q very appro-
 priate legend for every sign post point
 ing to London, would be, Healthy men
 and women taken in and done for. :"
 Scientific medical men have declared,
 after long investigation, that dWellers
 within the four-mile circle might possi-
 bly, get breath of ozone once a quar-
 ter, but that in all probability those
 dwelling in the Strand Fleet street,
 Holborn and Cheapsde haven't had a
 whiff of that kind of thing in the last eighty or one hundred years. After all, though, even the teeming centers of London can't be really unhealthy to those who live sober and regular lives. Else, how comes it that there are so many aged people passing g comforta
 be existence in the London workhous- es? At Camberwell, out of nine hun dred and sixteen inmates, there are one hundred and thirty-three whose boast it is that being over eighty they have lived under five English sovereigns, and there are one hundred who can make this boast at the Bethnal Green work house, which houses paupers from the slum district of the East End,
 The coroners of London hold annually about eight thousand inquests. Deaths from violence last year numbered 3,671. There were only fifty-eight homicides, the verdicts of murder being thirt y-two, and of manslaughter twenty-siX. Sui cides were discovered to the number of four hundred and fffty-one. Very com- mon is it in London for despairing lov- CTS to die together. Doubtless, if the river did not carry out to sea so many bodies of female unfortunates who take the watery route into oblivion, the total of reported suicides would be much larger. In this connection how sad to know that every night there are three thousand womenin London whose only place to lay their heads is in some shel- ter provided by charity. There were three hundred and seventy-one deaths last year from street accidents, and annually the number injured by the street traffic of London approaches closely to ten thousand
 There are over twenty-five hundred buses running every day In London. Ten years ago there were only eighteen hundred. The average distance GOV cred daily is sixty-four miles, the aver age net earnings per bus, twelve dol lars and fifty cents The average con ductor gets a dollar and quarter day and the driver a dollar and fifty cents. | Every conductor and driver pays a dollar and a quarter annually for li- | cense. There is one driver still at work | in London at eighty-tive years of age. | He boasts the distinction of having | driven the last mail coach that came | into London from the west. He has | driven a bus through the streets of London sixtyfive years and in that i time has, of course covered a length of | road which would exceed many times the circumference of the earth.
 Mr. Benn, chairman of the highways | of the London county eoun- cil, has just given some instructive fig ures regarding the number of passen- gers carried by various means through l out London in the course of year. By | the estimate is four hundred by omnibus five hundred mill lions, tramWays three hundred millions hackney carriages seventy millions three and a half millions | making the enormous total of one bill lion and a quarter. Thirty-eigh omn- bus routes converge at Charing Cross, | and about seven hundred buses pass there every hour, carrying nine thou sand passengers per hour. As an omni- bus center, Piccadlly Circus ranks next to Charing Cross, with six hundred and fifty buses for the hour and eighty-five hundred passengers Along the Strand four hundred and forty five buses pass, carrying six thousand passengers in the hour. and at Hyde Park corner the rate per hour is three hundred and ninety buses and five thousand passengers
 It is perhaps not generally known hat last summer a new street in Lon- Ion was named Joubert in honor of the first commander of the Boer armies It was the borough of Battersea which finally fixed upon this name, but some }redit is also due to the London county which has full power over all street names, both old and new, and which had generously included JOubert amongst the six names it allowed the 3attersea Councilmen to select from n it's use of the power given it by par lament to change offensive street names for those more pleasing to the