Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Annual report on the health, sanitary condition, &c., &c., of the Parish of St. Mary Abbotts, Kensington for the year, 1899
This page requires JavaScript
4
POPULATION, RATEABLE VALUE, etc.
The table at page 5 shows the relative number of persons
of each sex, as ascertained at the census of 1891, grouped
according to age; (a) in the entire parish, (b) in the Kensington
Town sub-district, and (f)in the Brompton sub-district. There
is no later information as to age-distribution of the population,
nor will there be until the next census is taken in 1901. The
166,308 persons comprised in the population in 1891, were in
occupation of about 22,000 houses or an average of 7.56 to
each house. An error, somewhat widely disseminated, that
Kensington is almost wholly a parish of rich or well-to-do
persons, may be corrected by a reference to the official report
of the census of 1891, from which we learn that 70,718 persons,
or 42.5 per cent. of the population, were living in 20,052 tenements
of less than five rooms. The entire population of the
parish at that date was in occupation of 35,953 tenements
and certain public institutions. No fewer than 6,398 of these
"tenements" consisted of a single room each; these rooms
being inhabited by 13,655 persons. The two-roomed tenements
were 6,965, and their inhabitants numbered 26,020.
The three-roomed tenements were 4,115, and their inhabitants
18,119. The four-roomed tenements were 2,574, and their
inhabitants 12,924. Stated in another way, it appears that
8.2 per cent. of the parishioners lived in one-room tenements;
15.6 per cent. lived in two-room tenements; 10.9 per cent.
lived in three-room tenements, and 78 per cent. in four-room
tenements. In North Kensington there were approximately
8.7 persons to a house; in South Kensington about 6.7. But
many houses of eight rooms, in North Kensington more
particularly, contained, and contain now, upwards of twenty
persons to a house, and some even more than thirty persons.