| First class of Streets. | Houses I class. | Mortality one in 51 |
| ” | ” II ” | ” 45 |
| ” | ” III ” | ” 36 |
| Second ” | ” I ” | ” 55 |
| ” | ” II ” | ” 38 |
| ” | ” III ” | ” 35 |
| Third ” | ” I ” | Wanting— |
| ” | ” II ” | Mortality ” 35 |
| ” | ” III ” | ” 25 |
It is clear from other tables given by Holland that the mortality in the streets of the second class is 18 percent greater, and in the streets of the third class 68 percent greater than in those of the first class; that the mortality in the houses of the second class is 31 percent greater, and in the third class 78 percent greater than in those of the first class; that the mortality is those bad streets which were improved, decreased 25 percent. He closes with the remark, very frank for an English bourgeois:29
“When we find the rate of mortality four times as high in some streets as in others, and twice as high in whole classes of streets as in other classes, and further find that it is all but invariably high in those streets which are in bad condition, and almost invariably low in those whose condition is good, we cannot resist the conclusion that multitudes of our fellow-creatures, hundreds of our immediate neighbours, are annually destroyed for want of the most evident precautions.”
The Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Working-Class contains information which attests the same fact. In Liverpool, in , the average longevity of the upper-classes, gentry, professional men, etc., was thirty-five years; that of the business men and better-placed handicraftsmen, twenty-two years; and that of the operatives, day-labourers, and serviceable class in general, but fifteen years. The Parliamentary reports contain a mass of similar facts.
The death-rate is kept so high chiefly by the heavy mortality among young children in the working-class. The tender frame of a child is least able to withstand the unfavourable influences of an inferior lot in life; the neglect to which they are often subjected, when both parents work or one is dead, avenges itself promptly, and no one need wonder that in Manchester, according to the report last quoted, more than fifty-seven percent of the children of the working-class perish before the fifth year, while but twenty percent of the children of the higher classes, and not quite thirty-two percent of the children of all classes in the country die under five years of age.30 The article of the Artisan, already several times referred to, furnishes exacter information on this point, by comparing the city death-rate in single diseases of children with the country death-rate, thus demonstrating that, in general, epidemics in Manchester and Liverpool are three times more fatal than in country districts; that affections of the nervous system are quintupled, and stomach troubles trebled, while deaths from affections of the lungs in cities are to those in the country as 2½ to 1. Fatal cases of smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, and whooping cough, among small children, are four times more frequent; those of water on the brain are trebled, and convulsions ten times more frequent. To quote another acknowledged authority, I append the following table. Out of 10,000 persons, there die—31
| Under 5 years | 5–19 | 20–39 | 40–59 | 60–69 | 70–79 | 80–89 | 90–99 | 100 x | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| In Rutlandshire, a healthy agricultural district | 2,865 | 891 | 1,275 | 1,299 | 1,189 | 1,428 | 938 | 112 | 3 |
| Essex, marshy agricultural district | 3,159 | 1,110 | 1,526 | 1,413 | 963 | 1,019 | 630 | 177 | 3 |
| Town of Carlisle, –, before introduction of mills | 4,408 | 921 | 1,006 | 1,201 | 940 | 826 | 633 | 153 | 22 |
| Town of Carlisle, after introduction of mills | 4,738 | 930 | 1,201 | 1,134 | 677 | 727 | 452 | 80 | 1 |
| Preston, factory town | 4,947 | 1,136 | 1,379 | 1,114 | 553 | 532 | 298 | 38 | 3 |
| Leeds, factory town | 5,286 | 927 | 1,228 | 1,198 | 593 | 512 | 225 | 29 | 2 |
Apart from the divers diseases which are the necessary consequence of the present neglect and oppression of the poorer classes, there are other influences which contribute to increase the mortality among small children. In many families the wife, like the husband, has to work away from home, and the consequence is the total neglect of the children, who are either locked up or given out to be taken care of. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at if hundreds of them perish through all manner of accidents. Nowhere are so many children run over, nowhere are so many killed by falling, drowning, or burning, as in the great cities and towns of England. Deaths from burns and scalds are especially frequent, such a case occurring nearly every week during the winter months in Manchester, and very frequently in London, though little mention is made of them in the papers. I have at hand a copy of the Weekly Despatch of , according to which, in the week from to inclusive, six such cases occurred. These unhappy children, perishing in this terrible way, are victims of our social disorder, and of the property-holding classes interested in maintaining and prolonging this disorder. Yet one is left in doubt whether even this terribly torturing death is not a blessing for the children in rescuing them from a long life of toil and wretchedness, rich in suffering and poor in enjoyment. So far has it gone in England; and the bourgeoisie reads these things every day in the newspapers and takes no further trouble in the matter. But it cannot complain if, after the official and non-official testimony here cited which must be known to it, I broadly accuse it of social murder. Let the ruling class see to it that these frightful conditions are ameliorated, or let it surrender the administration of the common interests to the labouring-class. To the latter course it is by no means inclined; for the former task, so long as it remains the bourgeoisie crippled by bourgeois prejudice, it has not the needed power.
