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97
POPULATION.
According to the Census of 1901 the population of the
Borough was then 51,247. By the more recent Census of 1911 the
population for the same area was shown to have decreased during
the 10 years to the extent of nearly 600. In this Report the rates
are based on the estimated civil population for the middle of the
year 1915, and the figure amounts to 50,527.
The war has made it impossible to adhere to the methods of
estimation of local and national populations hitherto in use. Men
of military age have been largely drafted to military training
centres or sent abroad with the Army, and the remainder of the
male adult population, as well as, to a lesser extent, the female
population, has migrated on an unprecedented scale into areas
other than those in which it was enumerated at the last Census.
Under these circumstances, estimates of local populations
based on the Census returns were clearly inadmissable, and it
became necessary to search for a substitute. Fortunately, this
was ready to hand in the shape of the National Register, which
referred to a date only six weeks removed from that for which
estimates were required, viz., the middle of the year 1915. No
doubt this does not form a perfect record, as it is known that a
number of persons escaped registration. From investigations,
however, which have been made in another connection, it appears
that the defects in the register taken as a whole are not on such
a scale as to affect seriously the estimates of population based
upon it. By the method described below it was possible to derive
from these returns estimates of the civil population only of each
administrative area on August 15th. No attempt has been made
to increase these by allowance for members of the fighting forces,
because, apart altogether from the difficulty of ascertaining the
average military population of each district during the year,
experience has shown that under present circumstances only
civilian deaths can be tabulated for local areas. If military deaths
were to be included they would have either to be debited to the