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127
THE STRAND DISTRICT, LONDON.
below the average of previous censuses; in the Strand part of the
District it was 4.14, and in St. Anne's, where the decrease is
greatest, 3.72.
Houses.—A new sub-division has been introduced at this
Census under the heading "occupied in daytime but not at night,"
these were formerly included under the heading "empty houses."
It will be noticed in Table I. that whereas in 1891, there were 508
empty houses in the District there were in March, 1896, 91 empty
and 510 occupied by day only (19.6 per cent. of all the "houses"
being in the latter class). The percentage of these purely business
houses being in St. Clement's 17.4, St. Mary 10.0, St. Paul26.8,
Rolls 38.5, Savoy 22.8 and St. Anne's 16.6. Since 1891, the
total number of census "houses" in the district has decreased
from 2,730 to 2,601.
Age and Sex.—It is to be regretted that at this Census no
enquiry was made relative to age, as without a knowledge of the
number of persons of each sex living at various age periods, a
true death-rate cannot be computed. In this District an alteration
has been gradually taking place in the proportion of males
to females in the population; thus taking males as 100, the females
were 107 in 1861, 105 in 1871, 104 in 1881, 100 in 1891 and
97.58 in 1896* In the Strand Sub-district, the proportion is
97.6 females to 100 males, and in St. Anne 97.54. It is
possible this change may be due to the alteration in the occupancy
of many premises, these houses at one time each occupied by a
family who would keep one or more female servants, are being
utilised for business purposes, lodging-houses, or sublet in tenements.
As the death-rate among males is greater than among females in
the aggregate, this change would tend to raise the rate for the
District, but this again would be much influenced by the ages of
the persons of each sex. Mr. Shirley Murphy in his report to the
County Council for 1893 has worked out the effect of the varying
distribution of males and females of different ages in each of
* In England and Wales the proportion was 100 to 105 for two decades
previous to 1891, but at that Census females rose to 106.