THE TERRIBLE MORTALITY RATE OF LONDON CHILDREN UNDER 5 YEARS OF AGE—ABOUT 1790

Abstract

How few children survived their fifth year of life in the 1790's was forcefully shown in these words of Dr. Michael Underwood.1 The average of births annually, within the bills of mortality, for ten successive years, as taken a few years ago (c. 1790), was 16,238; out of which were buried under five years of age 10,145, and from amongst these 7,987 were under two years. So that almost two thirds of the children born in London and its environs, become lost to society, and more than three fourths of these die under two years of age.—This proves how hazardous a period that of infancy is, in this country; and I am sorry there is so much reason to be persuaded that the want of air, exercise, and a proper diet, has added unnecessarily to its dangers; there being no such mortality in barbarous nations, whose inhabitants live in a state of nature; nor in any part of the known world, amongst other young animals.