Excerpt from Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, Vol. 57: Thirty-Fourth Session; January, 1881

Ireland - including 78 in Clare, 23 in Leitrim, 4 in King's County, and none at all in Fermanagh.' Such figures, and the remarkable variety in the number of the reports from medical officers of health with very similar districts, prove that a much closer inspectional system is required; and the same might be more forcibly said as regards supervision of vaccination, which in England is so thoroughly organized.

Last year, out of every thousand in Ireland, 196 were reported to have died but in many districts, especially those sparsely peopled, numerous deaths were not recorded. AS in England, Speedy regis tration should be compulsory - no interment being allowed until the undertaker had produced a certificate of the death and its cause. In this way medical aid is secured for infants and aged or infirm persons who might otherwise be neglected, if burial without certification were possible. Persons qualified to discover the causes of death should be alone recognised. In some English counties 7 or 8, and in Wales 11 per cent. Of the deaths are not certified. Deaths are closely pro portional to density of population therefore, while last year the rate was in Galway County 16, it Was 35 in Dublin. But such urban excess is reducible. For instance, London that well sanitated city, has a third less mortality than that due to it according to congestion of inhabitants. Of our large towns, Sligo had the lowest rate namely 21; but such figures cannot be fairly compared with those of Dublin. The people of Sligo district cover an area of acres; our occupy but acres. Even within the Dublin Registration District similar sources of fallacy arise. For instance, in Blackrock sub-district - for persons the acreage is nearly 3 in the Coleraine-street sub-district the population is the area about 400 acres, or a condensation 12 times greater. The seven Registrar's districts in Dublin do not appear to have been separately surveyed. The death-rate last year appears as 38 in this dense population, 19 in the suburban one, in the crowded parts of which I neverthless know purlieus as deadly as any about Coleraine-street. Much more might be adduced to Show how greatly needed as sanitary and probably political measures are the unification of areas for fiscal, electoral, and registration purposes, and the differentiation of those that are urban and those mainly rural.

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