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5 [1911
Nevertheless at the next decennial census (18(il) it is found that the
population had increased by 63,1 per cent,; in actual numbers by 60,122 peisons ;
while at the census of 1871, although the percentage increase had fallen to 371,
yet the actual increase was not much lower than in 1861, 58,408, as against
60,122,
In 1881 the percentage increase once more showed a decrease for it was
only 32,3, while the actual increase was 69,116 persons, as compared with the
figures in the previous paragraph,
Since 1881, however, the increases, actual and percentage, have steadil}
declined, so that in 1891 they were 36,290, and 12-8 per cent, respectively; in
1901 15,836, or 4,9 per cent,; and now in 1911 there is at last a decrease of
7,588 persons, equal to 2,2 per cent,, as compared with the 1901 census,
Why has this decrease occurred? It is not easy to give a definite answer
to this question, but probably the following causes have had some effect:—
1, For a very long period, at least two hundred and fifty years, Islington had
been the home of many city men, They found it of easy access from the city in
those early days; a short distance to walk, drive, or ride, It was attractive
because of its wide fields, its green pastures, its wooded country, its pleasant
walks, its general country life, its sheep and its cattle, its buxom milk maids,
and its general air of rusticity, It was, above all, healthy and salubrious,
It, therefore, gradually became the great suburb of the City of London, many
of whose merchants quitted their city residences for more commodious and
better equipped houses in rural Islington, It would be both interesting and
instructive to follow the growth of the borough step by step: to record the
names of the historical, literary, and other well-known people who resorted
thither at one time or another either for health sake or for a country home,
but this is hardly the time or the occasion to do so, Still the fact that they
did live here shows that from an early period Islington was looked upon as a
pleasant place to retire to every evening, after a day of anxiety in the city,
Stow in his Survey of London, speaks of it as " a country town hard by,
which in the former age was esteemed so pleasantly seated, that in
1581 Queen Elizabeth (in one of the twelve days that she resided in
the Tower) on an evening rode that way to take the air," Thus early its
healthy and pleasant position was well recognised, so that it is no wonder to
find that it became a health resort; and that many persons, of " quality " and
otherwise, resorted to it for their health sake, just as to-day people go to the