In the north part of his district in the quarter ended December 28, 1872, the rate of mortality of children under five was 61·1 per cent., whilst in the quarter ended September, 1873, in Goodman's Fields the rate was 72·4 per cent. In St. George-the-Martyr, Southwark, in 1873-4, of 1,256 deaths 694 (= 55·3 per cent.) were under five. In the same year the Medical Officer of Health for Paddington wrote:-- "In taking fifteen streets typical of the ordinary condition of the dwellings in which the working-class reside, I find the annual proportion of deaths under five ranges from 41 to 75 per cent. of the total deaths.... "The deaths from all causes in eighteen such streets varies from 21·7 to 50 per 1,000." The Medical Officer of Health for Limehouse wrote in 1874:-- "As usual we find that of 1,000 deaths more than 500 are those of children under five." Two years later it was 53 per cent. Nor was it only in the central parts of London that the infantile mortality was so frightful. In Wandsworth, the mean annual rate during the years 1865-74 was 49·6 per cent. The infantile death-rate did not diminish as the decade proceeded. In Islington in 1875-6 the infant mortality was "much about the same" as it had been twelve years previously. In Kensington it had increased to 46·3 in 1878; in St. George-the-Martyr to 57·7 per cent.; in St. Pancras in 1877-8, of 5,068 deaths, 2,212 (or 45·6 per cent.) were of children under five. The Medical Officer of Health for Poplar wrote (1877-8):-- "The deaths of children under five years have been more than half the total of deaths--truly a 'massacre of the Innocents.'" The Medical Officer of Health for Islington wrote (1880):-- "The number of deaths of children under one year is still painfully large.... Children seem to be born for little else than to be buried." Passing from record to comment, there are some striking passages in the reports of the Medical Officers of Health. Thus the Medical Officer of Health for Paddington wrote:-- "... Of infantile mortality one is tempted to ask whether the provision of so much life, such a prodigality of being, to be followed so soon by an almost Pharaoh sacrifice of it, is necessary to the multiplication of the race." And the Medical Officer of Health for St. Marylebone (1877):-- "It is sad, and in a sanitary point of view, humiliating to contemplate, that for every three children born in Marylebone, one dies before reaching the age of five years; 'tis true that in this respect Marylebone stands in no worse position than other large parishes in the metropolis, nor so bad as in the majority of them, but the knowledge of this fact will, I apprehend, afford but slender consolation to those who know from experience and daily observation that hereditary diseases, habitual neglect, unwholesome dwellings, together with other preventable causes, are largely concerned in the sacrifice of infant life." And the Medical Officer of Health for Rotherhithe (1881):--