In some of the occupations which show a high relative mortality, the
number of living is too small to allow of any reliable statistical
result, and the relative mortality is probably due to accidental
circumstances quite unconnected with the occupation. In other cases,
however, the numbers are so considerable as to indicate something more
than accident. The 299 sailors, for instance, constituted one
twenty-fourth of the whole estimated number in that occupation. The 7
ballast-heavers form just the same proportion of the whole in that
occupation, and the 53 coalporters and coalheavers constituted one in 32
of those so employed. Now all those persons lived or were employed on
the river, where it is the habit to drink water drawn by pailfuls from
the side of the ship. The 67 hawkers are one in 22 of the whole number.
These persons are constantly moving about, and are in the habit of
living in crowded lodging-houses, and consequently must be extremely
liable to contract any communicable disease. Tanners nearly all live in
Bermondsey and Lambeth, supplied in 1849 with none but very impure
water, as was previously explained. The weavers probably suffered the
high rate of mortality from the crowding of their apartments in
Spitalfields, and the uncleanness of their habits.
The persons who suffered less from cholera than any other part of the
male population, are footmen and men-servants; and it is impossible to
conceive a class less exposed to the disease. They live in the best
parts of London, and go from home much less than their masters. The low
rate of mortality amongst medical men and undertakers is worthy of
notice. If cholera were propagated by effluvia given off from the
patient, or the dead body, as used to be the opinion of those who
believed in its communicability; or, if it depended on effluvia lurking
about what are by others called infected localities, in either case
medical men and undertakers would be peculiarly liable to the disease;
but, according to the principles explained in this treatise, there is no
reason why these callings should particularly expose persons to the
malady.
=TABLE XIV.=
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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