Part 25

Local exceptions to this general rule will of course be found to exist, as is always the case with laws based on mere statistics, especially, as here, where reports to the registry are liable, for evident reasons, to be withheld. Thus it appears from Dr. Jewell’s collections (this Journal, March, 1857, p. 277,) that the proportion of still-births in Philadelphia was, in 1856, only 1 in 913 to the total population, and 1 in 20.1 to the general mortality, against which evidence must be placed that which we subsequently furnish from Prof. Hodge.

MSS. Letter from City Registrar, March 26, 1857.

CHICKERING, Comparative View of the Population of Boston, 1850. City Document, No. 60, p. 44.

Twelfth Registration Report to the Legislature of Massachusetts, 1853, p. 116. The truth of this statement has been corroborated by Dr. Curtis, in his Report on the Census of Boston in 1855. City Document, 1856, p. 22. Also, Fifteenth State Registration Report, 1856, p. 179.

“Had the rate of the annual increase of the numbers living under the age of five (3.13 per cent.) resulted entirely from the increase of births in a permanent population, the number of births of 1855 (in the districts where the ratio of the registered deaths to the population was greater than one to sixty-three, 166 of the 331 towns) would have been 24,457, instead of 23,481, the number registered. On the other hand, had the increase resulted wholly from migration, (the annual number of births in the permanent population being constant,) the number of births would have been only 22,956. The number of births registered is somewhat nearer the latter than the former of these two values.

“Assuming the correctness of the births, deaths, and population, in the selected districts, it appears that 35 per cent. of the increase of the population under the age of five was due to births in the permanent portion of the population, and 65 per cent. due to the movement of the migratory portion; also, that 38 per cent. of the increase of population at all ages was due to excess of births over deaths, leaving 62 per cent. to be accounted for by excess of immigration over emigration.”—ELLIOTT, The Laws of Human Mortality in Massachusetts; Proceedings of Am. Assoc. for Adv. of Science, Montreal, 1857, p. 57.

CHICKERING, loc. cit., p. 49.

The tables now presented, we have compiled from the fifteen published Registration Reports of the State of Massachusetts. Advance sheets of the Sixteenth Report have kindly been furnished me while this article is passing through the press, by the compiler, Dr. Josiah Curtis, of Boston. The premature births for 1856 and 1857 are not given in the reports for those years, so that I cannot extend my calculations beyond 1855. Deductions from the still-births at the full time, which are alone given in the years referred to, are of course useless for the present inquiry.

Births, 27,664; population, 994,665.

Births, 32,845; population, 1,132,369.

Total births at full time, 32,845; living births at full time, 32,120. Fœtal deaths, 2064; still, at full time, 725; premature, 1339.

Total deaths, including 1462 fœtal, 19,461.

Total deaths, including 2064 fœtal, 21,523.

Births at full time, 154,245; premature, 5899.

Fourteenth Registration Report, 1855.

Fourteenth Registration Report, 1855.

In the above remarks we must not be misunderstood. We believe Massachusetts no worse with regard to abortion than many other portions of the country, but that its registration is conducted with greater care. From the statistics given it may easily be surmised what the amount of this crime must be elsewhere. It is necessarily of infinitely more common occurrence than infanticide, the murder of children after birth, for proof of the frequency of which, at the present moment, in Great Britain, we refer to Dr. Burke Ryan’s Fothergillian Essay on the subject in the London Sanitary Review for last July, and to the London Lancet of corresponding date.

As, for instance, in the regularly progressive series of deaths and births, as compared with the population; constant, also as compared with each other:—Population of Massachusetts: by census of 1850, 994,665; 1855, 1,132,369. Deaths: 1851, 18,934; 1852, 18,482; 1853, 20,301; 1854, 21,414; 1855, 20,798. Births: 1851, 28,681; 1852, 29,802; 1853, 30,920; 1854, 31,997; 1855, 32,845.

Reports of Attorney-General of Massachusetts, from 1849 to 1858. State Documents.

Comptes Rendus Annuels de la Justice Criminelle.

Introductory Lecture, 1854, p. 17.

Report to Suffolk Dist. Med. Society, May, 1857; New York Med. Gazette, July, 1857, p. 390; N. H. Journal of Medicine, July, 1857, p. 211.

Loc. cit., p. 313.

The Law of Population, 1830.

HUME, Essays, vol. i. No. xi., p. 431.

Études sur l’Économie Politique; Nouveaux Principes d’Économie Politique.

Loc. cit., ii. p. 253.

Ibid., i. p. 451. An opinion to the same effect, italicized, has already been quoted.