THE FALL OF THE BIRTH-RATE 27 



In the thirty years 1871-1901 the five districts at 

 the bottom of the list exactly maintained their fer- 

 tility: the three at the top dropped their fertility by 

 23 per cent. During the last decade the top districts 

 on the average have decreased their fertility by some 

 3 per cent., the five bottom districts have decreased 

 theirs by nearer 5 per cent, or very little more. The 

 figures for individual districts are, however, so erratic 

 that I should not like to lay any stress on this last 

 result. It seems probable enough that the more rapid 

 decrease may have spread from the upper strata 

 downwards, and in the decade 1901-1911 have begun 

 to affect even such districts as Poplar, Bermondsey 

 and Bethnal Green, but more evidence is necessary 

 before this can be accepted as a demonstrated con- 

 clusion. Possibly, for example, the districts were 

 themselves changing in character. 



Dr Heron (ref. 7) in his paper of 1906 reached 

 similar conclusions on very similar data, for he also 

 took the districts of London as the basis of his work. 

 He discussed, for 1851 and for 1901, the correlation 

 of the legitimate birth-rate on married women over 

 20 years of age with various measures of the poverty 

 or social grade of the district such as the proportion 

 of professional men, of domestic servants, of pawn- 

 brokers, of general labourers, etc., and found on the 

 whole (though with exceptions in certain cases) a very 

 marked decrease in the closeness of the correlation in 

 1851 as compared with 1901. 



So far as I know no progress was made on this 

 particular point since the date of Heron's and my 

 own papers until the promt year, when a paper by 

 Dr Stevenson on the fertility data collected at the 

 census of 191 i c mphasised it once more. I extract 

 in Table VIII a portion of one of his tables (the 

 upper half of 'Fable 11). This table shows, for the 



