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6
The population of the Parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, which
was 28,252 in 1821, had decreased in 1901 to 11,527. Its Park and
Embankment Wards have now become the Charing Cross Ward;
their population in 1861 was 11,071, it is now about half—5,755,
Its Long Acre Ward has been joined with the Parish of St. Paul
and a piece of St. Giles to form Covent Garden Ward, and is, to
some extent, also affected by street improvement schemes.
It is customary to calculate birth and death rates on the population
at the middle of each year, and as the census takes place about the
end of the first quarter, it is necessary to estimate what increase or
decrease is likely to take place. The Registrar-General usually
takes it for granted that a similar condition of things will persist in
the next 10 years as did in the past decade. According to this
method, the population of the City, in the middle of 1901, was
182,502, as against 183,011, the number ascertained at the census in
the spring. I have arrived at nearly the same figure by a different
method. Instead of taking the population of the City in gross, I
have taken it for each Ward, applying thereto information available
as to property being built and occupied or about to be demolished;
by this means I get 182,597. A further correction has, however, to
be made for persons residing in Poor Law Institutions outside the
City. When any person dies in such Institution the death is recorded
against the locality in which he lived at the time of admission,
even though that may have been many years previously. It is
therefore only fair that, in estimating the death rate, the number of
persons in such Institutions should be added to the population of
the district. I find that there were 3,700 persons living in Poor
Law Institutions connected with the City, and that 3,051 of these
were in St. George's Workhouse and Infirmary and in the Strand
Workhouse, both of which lie beyond the City boundary. I have,
therefore, added these in making a total of 185,648. All the Poor
Law population has been distributed among the various Wards,
partly according to returns which the Masters of the Westminster
and Strand Warehouses were good enough to supply, showing the
part of these Unions from which the persons were admitted, and
partly by distributing them in proportion to the deaths recorded in
each Ward.
The populations calculated to the middle of the year on which
the rates have been calculated are:—