View report page

59
This table is full of instruction, and a few remarks may be made
upon it. The figures are based upon the census returns at each of
the six decades. The houses and population contained in the
detached portion of Clerkenwell, under the Pentonville District
(Muswell Hill), have been deducted, partly because they would
vitiate the returns as a whole, and partly because Muswell Hill is
not now a constituent part of the Borough of Finsbury It has not
been possible up to the present to obtain the correct sub-division of
the total population for 1901 for the sub-districts of the Charterhouse,
St. Sepulchre (including other properties transferred from Holborn),
and Glasshouse Yard.
Now a cursory glance at the table as it stands reveals the
following facts:—
1. The population reached its zenith between 1851 and 1861.
2. The number of inhabited houses was largest in 1851.
3. Since these respective dates there has been a steady
rupted decline both in houses and population. But whereas
the population has declined 21 per cent., the number of
inhabited houses has declined 34. per cent.
The chief decline in the houses occurred between 1881 and 1891,
whilst the chief decline in the population took place in the decennium
between 1871 and 1881. Again, it is obvious that these changes
have occurred in the most marked degree in those portions of the
Borough in immediate proximity to the boundary of the City of
London.
The Registrar General expresses the change in these words.*
"In each of the last two Census Reports it was pointed out that in
the centre of London there was a group of districts in which the
population had long been undergoing decrease owing to the
substitution of business houses for dwelling houses; and that round
this central area, and constituting the rest of Registration, or Inner
London, there was a circle or ring of districts, all of which had
undergone, more or less, rapid increase, the growth, speaking
generally, being greater the further the district was from the centre,
* Census Preliminary Report, 1901, p. xv.