§ MR. CHANNING (Northamptonshire, E.)asked the President of the Local Government Board, Whether the disease of syphilis has increased amongst children in this country since the introduction of compulsory vaccination in 1853; 463 whether this increase was most conspicuous in the case of children under one year of age; and, whether the greatest increase in the number of deaths from this disease in any one year as compared with the preceding year, was in 1854, the year after compulsory vaccination had been introduced into this country?
§ THE PRESIDENT (Mr. RITCHIE) (Tower Hamlets, St. George's)I have communicated with the Registrar General, and am informed that, so far as can be gathered from the old Reports, the mortality of children from syphilis has increased not only from 1853, when compulsory vaccination was introduced, but from the first year of which any records exist—namely, 1848. The increase from 1853 to 1885, the last year for which the figures are published, was not most conspicuous among children under one year of age. On the contrary, it was much greater among children from one to five years old than among children under one. The increase in 1854, as compared with 1853, was greater than in any other year as compared with its immediate predecessor. But the increase, so far from being most conspicuous among children under one, was vastly less among them than among children over one and under five, and even less than among adults, or rather of persons from five years upwards; so that it is quite impossible to attribute the increase in 1854 to the introduction of compulsory vaccination.