Mortality of Persons Engaged in the Liquor Traffic

(1851 Census)

The fourteenth annual report of the Registrar General of births, marriages, and deaths, which together with the fifteenth report, has just appeared, contains tables showing the mortality of men above the age of 20, engaged in various occupations in 1851. The following table shows first the general percentage at various ages, and secondly the percentage of persons in the liquor traffic: -

In absolute numbers the total of males of 20 years and upwards, in England and Wales, according to the census of 1851, was 4,720,904, and those who died in that year were 94,306. The number of such men who were engaged in the liquor-traffic in England and Wales was 55,325, and those dying, 1,706. The percentages of the several ages are given above, and show that at every section of age the mortality of the latter exceeded by about one half that of the whole number of men so classed, including their own class. They are in fact, highest in the death-scale, the nearest to them being farmers and graziers (2.847), general labourers (2.163), and butchers (2.133); all other occupations are under 2 percent. The liquor-dealers are not only highest on the whole percentage, but at every period of life, except the last (85 and upwards), at which period the general labourers exceed them by about 1 percent. (40.860 compared with 41.795). The most fatal periods of life for miners are from 55 to 75, the averages being 3.450 and 8.051, but the liquor-traffickers at the same periods, supply a percentage of 3.897 and 8.151. The reason of this extraordinary mortality among those who deal in articles of death, is probably to be sought in their habits as a class. We do not a attribute it to any special judgment; but considering how intemperate other classes are, and yet that none is so prolific in mortality as the retailers of alcohol, it would seem to show, either that more intemperate persons enter that traffic, or that more become intemperate after entering it than among any other class. These facts give “the trade” a per-eminence which it will not be anxious to vaunt before the world. –

National Temperance*.

*Reference can be found to the National Temperance under Evangelical Charities on the Victorian Web.