153 



XL — Some Peculiarities of the Vital Statistics of the 

 Society of Friends. 



By Alfred Fryer. 



[Read April 1th, 1857.] 



It is now universally acknowledged that the amount of suffer- 

 ing and death caused by the breaking of certain well-known 

 sanitary laws, renders the yearly preventible mortality of our 

 towns greater than that of the most bloody campaign ; the 

 number of deaths annually in this country, traceable to causes 

 within our control, is five times as great as the total number 

 of killed, wounded, and missing of the allied army at Water- 

 loo, — thus filth and miasma are more terrible than the sword 

 and the bullet. The mortality of the people in the town is 

 27 per ce"nt. greater than those in the country districts ; any- 

 thing bearing upon this subject becomes therefore important. 



The population of towns, and especially manufacturing 

 towns, comprehends so large a proportion of the poorer 

 classes, that any statistics covering the whole, fail to indicate 

 the amount of mortality due to the vitiated atmosphere and 

 other pernicious effects of densely peopled districts, as they 

 include an excess of deaths due to the occupations, habits, 

 and privations of the poor. 



It then becomes an important question : Is there any dif- 

 ice in the average duration of life of two portions of a 

 class of individuals, one living in towns and the other in the 

 country, and both provided with sufficient of the neces< 



