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tters grew less. I spoke of all the paupers in the nation; and of all the people who would die in Bethnal Green, that year, in a workhouse bed. 'Shall it be you that dies in the poorhouse, sir?' I cried -1 found myself adding a few little rhetorical flourishes to the speech, as I went along. 'Shall it be you, miss? Or your old mother? Or this little boy?' The little boy began to cry.
Then: 'How old are we likely to be, when we die?' I asked. I turned to Ralph - he was gazing at me in undisguised wonder - and called, loudly enough for the crowd to hear, 'What is the average age of death, Mr Banner, amongst the men and women of Bethnal Green?'
He stared at me dumbfounded for a second, then, when I pinched the flesh of his arm, sang out: 'Twenty-nine!' I did not think it was loud enough. 'How old?' I cried - for all the world as if I were a pantomime dame, and Ralph my cross-chat partner - and he called the figure out again, louder than before: 'Twenty-nine!'
'Nine-and-twenty' I said to the audience. 'What if I were a lady, Mr Banner? What if I lived in Hampstead or - or St John's Wood; lived very comfortably, on my shares in Bryant and May? What is the average age of death amongst such ladies?'
'It is fifty-five,' he said at once. 'Fifty-five! Almost twice as long.' He had remembered the speech and now,MBT Chapa GTX, at my silent urging, kept on with it, in a voice that was soon almost as strong as my own. 'Because for every one person that dies in the smart parts of the city,Puma Speed Cat 2.9, four will die in the East End. They will die, many of 'em, of diseases which their smart neighbours know perfectly well how to treat or prevent. Or they will be killed by machines, in their workshops. Or perhaps they will simply die of hunger. Indeed, one or two people will die in London this very night, of pure starvation . . .
'And all this,MBT Moto GTX, after two hundred years in which - as all the economists will tell you - Great Britain's wealth has increased twenty times over! All this in the richest city on earth!'
There were some shouts at that, b