210 
Village Sanitary Economy. 
a manufacturing character, whereby tlie risk to life is increased. 
In London, for instance, where the proportion of the manu- 
facturing class is comparatively small, the annual mortality 
averages 24 per 1000, while that of Manchester is 32 per 1000 ; 
so that, compared with the average death-rate of the most healthy 
rural districts, the mortality of Manchester, our largest manu- 
facturing town, is greater by 14|- per 1000 persons, and, com- 
pared with the average death-rate of the chief towns of the 
kingdom, is higher by 7J per 1000 persons. 
Again, although our rural poor suffer much from the cold and 
wet of the two winter quarters ending December and March 
respectively, the rate of mortality in towns indicates much 
greater suffering in the same periods of the year. In the three 
months ending December, the average death-rate in our chief 
towns is 24'78 per 1000, and in the March quarter 27"38 per 
1000 ; while the average mortality of country districts in the 
same periods was 1915 and 2o*26 respectively. 
But, satisfactory and encouraging to the rural classes as these 
comparisons may be, there is little to be said in favour of 
human providence to maintain the advantage, for it is a fact 
to be demonstrated by special local statistics that many of our 
villages are little better than nests of disease, showing even 
greater mortality than many of our large and crowded cities. 
The thatched roof, the low dormer windows, the cob walls. — 
graced as they frequently are by the ivy, the rose, and the 
jasmine,— -the filthy ash-heap, the leaky cesspool, the excrement- 
sodden soil, the saturated subsoil, and the polluted well, are 
all conducive to fever, diarrhoea, diphtheria, and phthisis, and 
explain with irresistible force to the sanitary reformer, who 
has more regard to the statistics of the Registrar-General than 
the charms of the picturesque, why it is that in so many of our 
villages 
" Childhood's cheek no longer glows, 
And village uuudon.s lose the rose." 
It is, indeed, impossible to over-estimate the evils incident to 
and tacitly permitted in villages, Ijccause they are small in size, 
and the constituent dwellings are low in value, when it is certain 
that if those evils existed in large towns they would be sum- 
marily dealt with as nuisances of the worst character. 
To bring: home to the landed interest the fact that rural 
districts are suffering from the want of that proper sanitary 
treatment which has already reduced the mortality of many 
large towns, some further details from the returns of the Registrar- 
General are extracted. 
England is divided into eleven registration districts, the mean 
death-rates of which are shown by the returns to be as follows : — 
