It is proper to observe, that so far as I was informed upon the evidence received in the Factory Inquiry, and more recently on the cases of children of migrant families, that opinion is erroneous which ascribes greater sickness and mortality to the children employed in factories than amongst the children who remain in such homes as these towns afford to the labouring classes. However defective the ventilation of many of the factories may yet be, they are all of them drier and more equably warm than the residence of the parent; and we had proof that weakly children have been put into the better-managed factories as healthier places for them than their own homes. It is an appalling fact that, of all who are born of the labouring classes in Manchester, more than 57 per cent. die before they attain five years of age; that is, before they can be engaged in factory labour, or in any other labour whatsoever. Of 4,629 deaths of persons of the labouring classes who died in the year 1840 in Manchester, the numbers who died were at the several periods as follows:— Under 5 years of age 2,649 or 1 in 1‑7/10 Above 5 and under 10 215 or 1 in 22 Above 10 and under 15 107 or 1 in 43 Above 15 and under 20 135 or 1 in 34 At seven, eight, or nine years of age the children of the working classes begin to enter into employment in the cotton and other factories. It appears that, at the period between 5 and 10 years of age the proportions of deaths which occur amongst the labouring classes, as indicated by these returns, are not so great as the proportions of deaths which occur amongst the children of the middle classes who are not so engaged. Allowing for the circumstance that some of the weakest of the labourers’ children will have been swept away in the first stage, the effect of employment is not shown to be injurious in any increase of the proportion who die in the second stage. In a return obtained from a district differently situated (Bethnal Green, where the manufactory is chiefly domestic) it appears that of 1,268 deaths amongst the labouring classes in the year 1839, no less than 782, or 1 in 1‑4/7, died at their own residences under 5 years of age. One in 15 of the deaths occurred between 5 and 10, the age when employment commences. The proportion of deaths which occurred between 10 and 15, the period at which full employment usually takes place, is 1 in 60 only. In that district the average age of deaths in the year 1839 was as follows, in the several classes, from a population of 62,018:— No. of BETHNAL GREEN. Average Deaths. Age of Deceased. 101 Gentlemen and persons engaged in professions, and their families 45 years.