FOREIGN EXCHANGES.—Quotations as under, LONDON on Paris, Hamburg, and Calcutta ;-and New York, Calcutta, and Hong Kong, on LONDON, for JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL STATISTICAL SOCIETY, JUNE, 1887. "CLASS MORTALITY STATISTICS." By NOEL A. HUMPHREYS, ESQ. [Read before the Royal Statistical Society, 19th April, 1887. THE marked decline in the English death-rate during the last eleven years, is at once the proof and the result of improvement in the public health due to sanitary labour and progress. This decrease of mortality, if continued, implies a largely increased mean duration of life in England, as well as great reduction in the amount of sickness. Local variations between the death-rates of different towns and of different rural districts still afford a wide field for further sanitary labour, without regard to the marked contrast between all urban and rural rates. The time has come, however, when it is urgently desirable that we should know more of the rates of mortality prevailing in the different strata of society. It is accepted as a fact, and it is apt to be regarded as inevitable, that the death-rates of the poor and of the rich are widely divergent; and Medical Officers of Health are constantly expressing their helplessness in dealing with the excess of mortality in their districts due partly to the poverty and partly to the manner of life of the poorer of the working classes. The want of trustworthy statistics of class mortality is therefore generally felt by all who are seeking solutions to some of the most deeply interesting social and political problems of the day, as well as by that smaller class called upon to study vital statistics simply from a public health aspect. In the direction of class mortality statistics, we have life tables founded upon comparatively small bases of facts for the Peerage, for the Clergy, and for the Upper Classes. We have Dr. Farr's Healthy District Life Table; and the Experience Life Tables of the Insurance Offices, based upon the mortality of insured, and therefore selected, male and female lives drawn for the most part from the upper and middle classes. We have also Dr. Farr's and Dr. Ogle's valuable statistics of the mortality of males engaged in different occupations. In many of these instances, however, the Tables relate only to males, and in some only to VOL. L. PART II. S adult males. There is practically no really trustworthy information of the various rates of mortality in the actual populations. of different social classes, including the entire families of men, women, and children. A near approach to such statistics should be supplied by the Trustees of the Peabody Fund, and by the authorities of various other Associations for the Improvement of the Dwellings of the Working Classes. The value and trustworthiness of the statistics issued by these authorities are, however, to a very great extent destroyed by the practical impossibility of debiting to the popula tion of the improved dwellings their due share of the increasing proportion of deaths of the working classes recorded in workhouses and hospitals. The influence of age and sex proportions upon the mortality statistics of a population is so great, more especially where the statistics of different social classes, or of persons engaged in different occupations, are under consideration, that the construction of life tables is necessary in order to eliminate these disturbing influences. Deductions from life tables are however always strictly comparable, and it will therefore be necessary briefly to notice a few of the principal life tables, bearing in mind the nature and extent of the facts upon which they are based, before comparing the conclusions to be drawn from them. Dr. Farr's English Life Tables, technically known as Nos. 1, 2, and 3, from the order in which they were published, may lay claim to be the first national life tables. The first of these tables was published in the Registrar-General's Fifth Annual Report, and was based upon the population enumerated at the Census of 1841, and the registered deaths in the same year. The second table was published in the Registrar-General's Twelfth Annual Report, and was constructed from the Census enumerations in 1831 and 1841, and from the registered deaths in the seven years 1838-44. The Life Table No. 3 was based upon the Census enumerations in 1841 and 1851, and upon the six millions and a-half of deaths registered in the seventeen years 1838-54. This English Life Table was constructed on a larger basis of facts than any other existing life table, and its trustworthiness as an exponent of the true mortality and duration of life of the entire English nation during that period of seventeen years cannot be called into question. The results of the English Life Tables Nos. 1 and 2 approximate very closely, a natural result of the fact that the death-rate in 1841 differed but slightly from the mean rate in the seven years 1838-44. Thus according to No. 1 Table the mean duration of life of males was 40'7 years, and by No. 2 Table 404 years. The mean annual rate of mortality in the seventeen years 1838-54, |