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53
HOUSE PROPERTY AND OVERCROWDING.
Finsbury is one of the central and smaller of the Metropolitan
Boroughs. Its acreage is about 589. Its population (provisional)
according to the Registrar-General is 101,476. The number of its
inhabited houses is 9,287. Its rateable value is nearly a million.
On the north it is bounded by Shoreditch and Islington; on the
west by St. Pancras and Holborn; on the south by Holborn
and the City; on the East by Shoreditch. The soil throughout the
greater part of the district is gravel and sand overlying the London
clay.
The number of inhabited houses and the population have both
been steadily declining since 1891. As far as can be judged it may
be said that the district reached its zenith as regards population
about the decennial period 1850-1860. The reason for the decline
is obvious—the district has become an industrial and commercial
one, not unlike the City of London in kind though not in degree.
The steady decrease in the number of inhabitants due to the
substitution of commercial for residential premises has not occurred
uniformly. The formation of the Clerkenwell Road and of Rosebery
Avenue and the widening of Golden Lane led to the demolition of
dwelling houses, and over the larger portion of the Eastern district
of the Borough there has been a steady transformation from
residential houses to business premises. But in the Amwell
sub-district, situated between Rosebery Avenue and Pentonville
Road, there has been apparently but little change either in population
or in house property, that is to say, it is in the main still
residential. This part of the district and Finsbury Square contain
residential houses of good class, and possibly the increase of the
population in the Amwell district between 1871 and 1881 was due
to the fact, to which further reference will be made, that these
houses, instead of being occupied as formerly by separate families,
were being let in tenements.