On comparing the proportion of deaths amongst all classes between one district and another, as well as between class and class, the general influence of the locality becomes strikingly apparent. The difference of mortality between one large district of the metropolis and another is shown in the following tabular view, made up by Mr. Alexander Finlaison, from the superintendent-registrar’s weekly returns of the mortality prevalent in the chief registration districts of the metropolis during the different seasons of the year. But the extremes of difference are more strikingly exhibited in smaller districts:—

The West District comprises

Kensington, St. George, Hanover Square, Westminster, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, St. James.

The North District comprises

St. Marylebone, St. Pancras, Islington and Hackney.

The Central District comprises

St. Giles and St. George, Strand, Holborn, Clerkenwell, St. Luke, East London, West Loudon, City of London.

The East District comprises

Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, St. George-in-the-East, Stepney, Poplar.

The South District comprises

St. Saviour’s, St. Olave, Bermondsey, St. George, Southwark, Newington, Lambeth, Camberwell, Rotherhithe, Greenwich.

The female is most in the house; she is the most regular and temperate in her habits; the male is subject to the influence of his place of occupation—the operative to his workshop, the clerk to the counting-house, and the merchant to crowded places of business. In the following returns made up by Mr. Farr, and in others that will hereafter be cited, the mortality prevalent amongst the females is given separately, as probably indicating most correctly the operation of the noxious influences connected with the place of residence:—

Mean Annual Mortality of Females in the following Metropolitan districts in the two Years and a half ending 31st December, 1839:—

Yet it is to be observed that the best and the worst districts present striking instances of extremes of condition in the residences and the inhabitants. In the Bethnal Green and the Whitechapel unions, in which are found some of the worst conditioned masses of population in the metropolis, we also find good mansions, well drained and protected, inhabited by persons in the most favourable circumstances. Immediately behind rows of the best-constructed houses in the fashionable districts of London are some of the worst dwellings, into which the working classes are crowded; and these dwellings, by the noxious influences described, are the foci of disease. These returns are all from large parishes, containing the mean results from all classes. If it had been practicable to give correctly the average rate of mortality prevalent in different classes of streets, the variation of results, it is to be presumed, from the variations of circumstances, would have been much greater. Since the character of the residences of many of the labouring classes, and the condition of their places of work and their habits are known, it is to be considered that where the occupations are duly registered, returns, on the principle of those we have first given of the average age of death amongst particular classes will afford the most close approximation to accuracy, or the best indications of the extent of the operation of the noxious circumstances under which each of those classes is placed.^[19]