1838.] Table of Mortality. 827' 



materials. The decrement in India is, as might be expected from the 

 climate, greater from birth than in London, but the favourable years 

 are the same, viz. from nine to fourteen, and there will be observed, with 

 due allowance for insalubrity, and for not perhaps the most favourable 

 rearing in a large school like our Orphan Asylum, that there is a ge- 

 neral correspondence in the results up to the age of six. After that age 

 the London decrement, in the first table given, is unaccountably small 

 compared with ours, as well as when compared with that of Dr. Price, 

 and is less than in many other European tables. I have seen in a 

 recent publication the following statement of the mortality of the 

 children brought up in the Blue Coat, or Christ Church School in 

 London. 



Lives. Deaths per ann. 



From 1814 to 1818 5130 51 



1818 to 1823 5193 44 



1824 to 1828 5412 40 



1829 to 1833 5670 36 



From this it would seem that the deaths in the early period were 

 about one per cent, per annum, but are reduced to two-thirds per cent, 

 in later years. Assuming the lives comprehended in the statement 

 to be from seven years old to fifteen, we have from the girls' table of 

 the Orphan School for the same ages the following result : 

 Lives. Annual Deaths. 



10,121 151 or 



one and a half (1.49) per cent, which is a double mortality for our 

 Calcutta institution, as compared with that of the London school, at 

 the most favourable period. 



The general bills of mortality for London, as given in the Philosophi- 

 cal Transactions, show for the same age an average rate of decrement 

 of 0.70 per cent.*, which would lead to the conclusion, that for those 

 ages the table is not perfect : for it is not possible to conceive, that the 

 general population of a city like London, including the half-starved 

 ragged children of the pennyless poor, are subject to fewer casualties 

 by death, than the well-fed and well-clothed inmates of this richly 

 endowed institution. 



Dr. Price in his table calculated from the London bills of morta- 

 lity, gives a ratio of deaths for this period of life uniformly exceeding 

 one per cent, being in the aggregate, upon 102,190 risks, 1280 

 deaths, or one and a quarter per cent, per annum, which is borne out 



* Lives, 5,22,172— Deaths, 3704. 



