A supplementary report on the results of a special inquiry into the practice of interment in towns.Chadwick, Edwin
History
A supplementary report on the results of a special inquiry into the practice of interment in towns.
Chadwick, Edwin
Burial; Cemeteries -- Great Britain; Mortality -- Statistics; Public health -- Great Britain; Working class -- Great Britain
§ 78. But to return to collective examples. Mr. Blencarne, on a view of
the sanitary condition of the population, and the causes of mortality
within his district, expresses a confident opinion that in that district
the average amount of mortality might be reduced one-third by efficient
sanitary measures. The saving by a reduction of 71 funerals yearly, or
one-third of the burials in that district, at the average expense of
funerals for the metropolis, would amount to nearly 1020_l._ per annum.
If, as appears to be practicable, there were a reduction of one-half of
the expenses of the other two-thirds of the average number of funerals,
the total saving from this source would be 2040_l._ per annum to the
population inhabiting, according to the last census, 1416 houses. Now
the annual share of the expense of the chief structural sanitary
arrangements, supposing every house in the district to be deficient,
would, on the proximate estimate, amount to a sum of 1829_l._, or less
than the amount saved by the reduction of the funeral expenditure,
giving the health and longevity, and all the moral and social savings,
_plus_ the mere pecuniary saving; these remoter savings being in
themselves unquestionably far greater than can be represented by the
pecuniary items directly economised.
§ 79. Whosoever will carefully examine what has been done in scattered
and fortuitous instances amongst persons of the same class, following
the same occupation, living in the same neighbourhoods, and deriving the
same amount of incomes, and will from such examinations judge of the
inferences as to what may be done by the more systematised application
of the like means, will not deem the representation extravagant, that
the same duration of life may be given to the labouring classes that is
enjoyed by professional persons of the first class; or that it is
possible to attain for the whole of a town population such average
durations of life as are attained by portions of existing towns; or say,
such an average as is attained by the population of the old town of
Geneva, that is to say of 45 years, or six years higher than appears to
be attained by the whole population of the county of Hereford, which, as
we have seen, is 39 years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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