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4
enumeration served to confirm the suspicion that the census
of 1891 did not accurately represent the normal population.
The population, as then ascertained, proved to be some 14,000
below the estimate I had made, upon the basis of the number
of inhabited houses, excess of births over deaths, &c.; and
it was 37,000 below the estimate of the Registrar-General.
The decennial increase, between 1881 and 1891, was only
3,157, as compared with increases in the two preceding decennial
periods of 50,000 and 43,000 respectively. In the Town subdistrict
no increase was shown in 1891, but a decrease of 1,390,
since 1881, despite an increase of 812 in the number of inhabited
houses which entitled us to expect an increase of about
7,000 in the population. In the Brompton sub-district there
was an increase, but of 4,547 only, whereas the increase of
1,101 in the number of inhabited houses entitled us to expect
an increase of 7,074. The net result was that in the parish, as
a whole, there was, as stated, an increase of 3,157 only, or
11,000 less than the increase in the number of inhabited houses
had led me to expect. This result was all the more surprising
seeing that during the ten completed years, 1881-90, the births
had exceeded the deaths by 13,557 (a number more than
four times as large as the enumerated increase in population);
so that the l088 during the decennium, by removals, had to be
taken at 10,843 as compared with gains, by immigration
alone, of 40,588 in the ten years 1861-71, and of 26,076 in the
ten years 1871-81. It may be remembered that in the report
for 1891, I attributed some portion of the discrepancy between
the estimated and the enumerated population to the fact that
the census was taken during the Easter Holidays, when many
families were out of town. The results of the enumeration
made in March, 1896, one week before Easter Day, seem to
confirm, to some degree at least, the opinion I expressed in
1891; seeing that during the five years that have since elapsed,
the increase in population (4,157) was greater by 1,000 than in
the ten years, 1881-91, the 1896 population totalling 170,465,