View report page

9
To the Right Worshipful the Mayor, Aldermen
and Councillors of the City of Westminster,.
Ladies and Gentlemen.
Annual Report for 1950.
I beg to present my twenty-sixth Annual Report on the health and
sanitary conditions of the City of Westminster. The Report is prepared
in accordance with Ministry of Health Circular 112/50 in which it is
stated that the information to be supplied should be on similar lines to
that specified for the Annual Report for 1949.
In a preamble to that report written in August, 1950, reference was
made to the Jubilee of the Metropolitan Boroughs then being celebrated
and the opportunity seemed appropriate to comment on the changes
that had taken place in the City over the previous fifty years. For this
purpose records such as the Annual Reports of my predecessor for 19001924
were consulted, followed by the results of my own observations of
the past twenty-five years. The planning of the City in some areas had
undergone such fundamental changes as to be unrecognisable from the
City of 1900. The Kingsway and Aldwych improvement had swept
away acres of decrepit properties while in the Millbank area, acres of
municipal dwellings, together with lofty office buildings and privately
owned flats had replaced the old cottage properties abounding in that
district. The transformation is still proceeding in another district of the
City. There, between Lupus Street and the river whole streets of
terraced houses will be cleared to make room for the new estate of 1,621
flats to be known as Churchill Gardens. 151 of these have already been
completed, and are now occupied. These terrace houses are in the main
obsolescent in structure and layout. The basements in all of them are
unsatisfactory for living in and the houses generally speaking are sadly
lacking in essential amenities. But the whole of this 33 acre site was
not occupied by dwelling houses; approximately one-third was taken
up with industrial buildings most of them war damaged or otherwise
dilapidated. Therefore while ultimately the families from the cleared
site will be offered accommodation, there will be available new housing
for a number of families already living in the City but inadequately
housed or in conditions otherwise unsatisfactory.
The Registrar General's mid-year estimate of population 105,100 has
since to be amended for the preliminary report of the Census has been
issued while this Report was being prepared. This gives a population
of 98,895 (46,061 males and 52,834 females), a percentage fall of 23.7
as compared with 1931. In the neighbouring City of London the
population has been halved.
As has frequently been stated the predominating activities of life in
this City, both business and social, are centred on its day to day nonresidential
population. In 1948 a rough estimate of the non-resident
population was submitted based on the number of main meals provided
in catering premises in the City. No other method of measurement
seems in any degree practicable, for the day population consists primarily
(7095) a 3