London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Finsbury 1900
Some notes on the housing question in Finsbury...
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Muswell Hill returns 1851-1891 have been deducted before
calculation. The Charterhouse has also been eliminated. It consists
of the Charterhouse itself, and several houses for officials, containing
in all a population of 124.
For comparative purposes the returns of persons per house in districts surrounding Finsbury may be shown thus: —
| Central Metropolitan Boroughs. | Persons Per House. | |
|---|---|---|
| 1891. | 1901. | |
| City of London | 7.0 | 6.9 |
| City of Westminster | 8.7 | 9.9 |
| Shoreditch | 9.0 | 9.1 |
| Islington | 8.4 | 8.6 |
| St. Pancras | 9.5 | 9.8 |
| Holborn | 9.9 | 12.3 |
| Finsbury | 10.6 | 10.9 |
| London Administrative County | 7.7 | 8.0 |
It will be seen in these figures, which are based on census returns,
that the persons per house have steadily increased. This is what
we should expect from a study of the figures with which we have
already dealt (namely, a decrease in houses 34 per cent., and a
decrease in population of only 21 per cent.) The return for the
present year is 10.9 persons per house, as compared with 7.8 in
London as a whole. As a matter of fact this figure of 10.9 is
somewhat fallacious on account of the large number of persons in
Finsbury living in "model dwellings." Elsewhere in the present
report is a return showing the blocks and tenements in these buildings,
including the population. When the census enumerators make
their returns for these model dwellings, they return the "separate
blocks" as houses, with the result that in Finsbury (where such
dwellings are very numerous), we obtain 92 houses (or separate