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28
BATTERSEA EAST.
The revision of the census, with the usual allowance for an
increased number of inhabitants, shews an official mean population
for the sub-district during the year 1883 of 60,758, with
a density equal to 64 persons per acre in the 947 acres included
in its boundaries. It may be mentioned that the Metropolitan
density of population is 52*5 persons per acre.
As however, large open spaces, such as Battersea Park,
the Southwark and Vauxhall Water Company's premises,
Latchmere, many acres of building l?.nd as yet uncovered,
the premises of the various railway and other public
companies, together with those of numerous private manufacturers
and others, occupy a very large proportion of the
area ot the sub-district; the density of population in those
parts which are built upon and occupied must be much
greater than that stated above, probably at least twice as
great.
\
These considerations are of much importance, more especially
with reference to the health condition and the mortality
rates of the sub-district. No axiom in sanitary science is
more abundantly demonstrated than that which asserts that
the death-rate increases in direct proportion to the density of
a given population.
The sickness of a given locality is also increased in like
proportion, so that a stationary, or better still, a diminished
death-rate, where population is largely increasing in
numbers and consequently density, is evidence of good
sanitary administration; without which all previous experience
demonstrates an increase both in the sickness and mortality
of every place so circumstanced.