Mr. George Haw has compiled the following table on the three St. George's
parishes (London parishes):-
Percentage of
Population Death-rate
Overcrowded per 1000
St. George's West 10 13.2
St. George's South 35 23.7
St. George's East 40 26.4
Then there are the "dangerous trades," in which countless workers are
employed. Their hold on life is indeed precarious--far, far more
precarious than the hold of the twentieth-century soldier on life. In
the linen trade, in the preparation of the flax, wet feet and wet clothes
cause an unusual amount of bronchitis, pneumonia, and severe rheumatism;
while in the carding and spinning departments the fine dust produces lung
disease in the majority of cases, and the woman who starts carding at
seventeen or eighteen begins to break up and go to pieces at thirty. The
chemical labourers, picked from the strongest and most splendidly-built
men to be found, live, on an average, less than forty-eight years.
Says Dr. Arlidge, of the potter's trade: "Potter's dust does not kill
suddenly, but settles, year after year, a little more firmly into the
lungs, until at length a case of plaster is formed.
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