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1,600 per annum till 1864, when we assume that it reached 91,600,
and that it has been stationary since.
Our reasons for believing that the population is at present
stationary are founded on the fact that the Hanover and Mayfair
Sub-Districts decreased in population from 33,464 to 32,686 in the
ten years 1851-1861. It may be alleged that this decrease may have
arisen from the fact that many families of distinction were out of
town when the census was made in 1861. But as there is no fresh
ground to build upon, and as overcrowding has been systematically
opposed, and as the number of births gives no reason for supposing
any material increase, we believe we are warranted in treating
the population of these Sub-Districts as virtually stationary, since
1851, at 32,500 or 33,000. But if the Hanover and Mayfair SubDistricts
were stationary, the increase of 1,500 per annum must
have taken place in the two wards of the Belgrave Sub-District;
and we can show that- this increase continued, and especially in
the ouf-ward or South Belgravia, till the middle of 1864. The
following list of the number of premises rated to the relief of
the poor in the various wards of the Parish during the last eleven
years will show this:—

The facts are obvious. The land for fresh buildings in the outward
is so nearly exhausted that the increase of houses is more
than balanced by the extensive demolitions which have been made,
partly for the sake of erecting new and still unfinished houses on
old sites, and partly to make room for the metropolitan railways.
Last year we presented to the Vestry a list of 204 houses, in
the vicinity of the Victoria Railway-station, which had been pulled
down or were marked for destruction. These houses (as we ascertained
from the census record of 1861, most kindly put at our
disposal by the Registrar-General) contained 371 families of 820
male and 998 female inmates—total, 1818—including 474 children
under 15. Since that time, still more extensive demolitions have
taken place on sites not yet rebuilt.*
* Ninety-five premises are now, or shortly will be, pulled down for the London, Chatham
and Dover Railway, and 35 for the Metropolitan District Railway. Several tenements
in Hanover-plase, in Oxford-street, and in Hereford-street and North-row, are rebuilding;
besides Grosvenor-place, S.W.