Sanitary Statistics of Native Colonial Schools and Hospitals

A meticulous Victorian‑era inquiry examines how colonial schooling affected the health of indigenous children. Prompted by worries that European education might be harming native populations, the author gathered official returns from the Colonial Office and compiled them into a series of tables that reveal attendance figures, ages, sexes, and mortality rates across a wide range of territories.

The study draws on data from 143 schools in places such as Ceylon, Australia, Natal, West Africa, and British North America. While the records are uneven—many colonies supplied little or no information—the available numbers show striking differences: mortality is relatively low in Natal, higher in Ceylon, and especially severe in Sierra Leone, where death rates exceed twenty per thousand for boys and thirty‑five for girls. The work highlights both the promise of systematic statistics and the stark gaps that limited a fuller understanding of colonial school health at the time.