"From the tenth to the nineteenth-born the mortality was markedly greater."

“Vitality of Last Children: The old belief, still common among the laity, that first-born children are endowed by nature with greater vitality and logevity than last-born, has induced Doctor Alfred Ploetz of Munich, Germany, to make an exhaustive study to ascertain if this were true. He compiled the returns from a very large number of families of the nobility, and his figures show, generally speaking, that the vitality of the first to ninth-born children varied little, but that from the tenth to the nineteenth-born the mortality was markedly greater.”

•Taken from the 1915 World Almanac and Book of Facts.