Death Rate Stationary

DEATH RATE STATIONARY

Same Number of Deaths Last Year and This

BORN IN EVERY CLIME

Are the People Who Die in Ann Arbor - A Study of Death Record Shows a Cosmopolitan Population

"Spin, Clotho, spin. 

Lachesis twist and Atrafas sever; In the shadow year out year in The silent headsman waits forever."

It is a strange coincident that the number of deaths recorded in the city clerks office up to date tally exactly with the number recorded for last year on the sixth of December. The total number of deaths last year was 224, and if between now and the new year there are ten deaths the number for the two years will also correspond. In 1901 there were 118 deaths of females recorded and 106 males, as against 112 female deaths and 102 male for the current year up to date. Last year there were eight deaths of colored persons recorded in the office while this year there are six. In 1901, 47 persons of the 224 were single and 177 married. This year 76 of the deaths were among unmarried persons and 138 among married. The average age of the persons dying during the year of 1901 was 43.6 years, while during the current year the average is 45.3 years up to the present date. 

The death record of this city is kept by the city clerk and requires a great many details which to record here would be of no interest to the public. A death never occurs in the city that is not fully recorded in the city books for future reference if it ever becomes necessary. Besides the figures given here there are many other features of the records that might possibly be of interest to others than physicians. One of these if the record of the birthplace of every one whose name appears on these books. Of course most of them are from Michigan, but during the last two years there is hardly a country in Europe that has not claimed a death. Also there are scattered throughout the lists records of persons whose birthplace has been in the more remote countries of other continents. The fact that a city of possibly only fifteen thousand inhabitants has had residents from all parts of the globe, not including the University population, only goes to show the cosmopolitan nature of the country's inhabitants when taken in the bulk.