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9
For statistical purposes, in the following pages the "Registration" District is
referred to when speaking of the "City."
This consists of one registration district and the population at the middle of
1919 as estimated by the Registrar-General is as follows:—
For the death rate 13,893
For the birth rate 14,472
As the smaller of these estimates is based upon the rationing returns, and in
my opinion more closely approximates the actual night population of the City,
this figure is used in calculating all vital statistics other than the birth
rate.
The Day Census taken in May, 1911, showed that the day population was
364,061 persons, and also that 1,077,155 persons and 94,095 vehicles entered and
left the City on the day the count was made.
population and housing.
The day population of the City is now estimated to be something under
14,000. These persons live in a few more or less well-defined areas such as the
Corporation Dwellings, the houses round about Hutchison Street, a few collected
houses off Fetter Lane, Chancery Lane, Long Lane, Fleet Street and other less
important centres. The remainder of the population resides in warehouses as
caretakers and a lesser number in institutions.
The progressively declining population has been due to the absorption of the
sites, on which houses stood, for trade and commercial purposes, and this fact has
brought in its train difficulties which are apparently being increasingly felt owing
to similar advances in areas outside the City.
The population within the City is totally inadequate to serve the day requirements
of established businesses. This is obvious from the fact that over 300,000
people are probably engaged in the City during the daytime. As a consequence
workers mainly reside in the outer London area.
It is clear that as businesses increase in number and encroach upon the housing
accommodation, the number of employees residing near their work decreases.
Transport difficulties arise both in connection with the conveyance of workers
and traders by rail, and in street traffic by the additional demands for the delivery
and removal of goods. This results in enormous waste of time. In the streets
progress is retarded to that of the most slowly moving vehicle, and on
the railway travelling becomes a source of irritation, not only as a consequence
of discomfort and rush, but from the tendency to reduce the general tone of
travellers by the hours available for recreation being reduced owing to the time
taken in going backwards and forwards to work.
These objections must affect the nervous organisation of many, and in this
way uncontrolled business encroachments—using the term "business" in its
widest sense—contribute considerably to housing and associated difficulties and
prejudicially affect the health and well-being of the working community.
It is not easy to suggest how present-day difficulties can be avoided for the
future, but it does seem desirable that Local Authorities should be given reasonably
wide powers to town-plan built-on or partially built-on areas. It has long been
recognised that there is a maximum size of town consistent with maximum efficiency
of local administration and general well-being of the inhabitants. Possibly
the future will show that populations of 200,000 or even less, on the restricted area
which is usually associated with a town, represent this maximum, but local advantages,
whether of geographical situation, natural resources or otherwise, may
prove too strong factors to limit excessive extensions of certain industrial areas.
Even in these instances it will always be found that some trades need not have
been established in these centres, and to prevent future inroads on available area
being extreme, unnecessary trades might be refused the right to be there established.
The principle of developing satellite towns seems worthy of consideration in this
connection, but if industrial concerns, which might rightly claim the right to
establishment, interfere prejudicially with the available housing by calling for
the demolition of residential property, it seems right to require that the purchase
of land scheduled as a residential area should involve the purchaser in contribution