London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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London County Council 1894

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for London County Council]

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(868 and 42 persons respectively at the 1891 census), require to be deducted, in order to obtain the
population resident in the sanitary area under the jurisdiction of the Whitechapel Board (73,552 at
the 1891 census). The rateable value of the Whitechapel Union (1894) is £413,157, and for the year
(1893-94) the average rates in the parishes, liberties, &c., in the union amounted to 6s. in the £.
Under the London Equalisation of Rates Act, 1894, the amount to be credited to the sanitary district
will relieve the rates to the extent of about 2id. in the £ annually.

The annexed table gives figures relating to the sanitary area, and is taken from the last census report—

Sanitary Aeeas under the Various Authorities, and their Constituent Civil Parishes.Area in Statute Acres.Houses, 1891.Population.
1891.1881.
Inhabited.Uninhabited.Building.Males.FemalesPersons.Persons.
Whitechapel Board of Works— Norton Polgate101801237167331,4491,528
Old Artillery Groundft] 5091,0671,0712,1382,516
Spitalfields731,818112611,94510.91422,35921,340
Mile End New Town421,13837115,6815,62211,30310,673
WhitechaDel,part of11693,3065602216,89015,39432,28430,660
St. Botolph without Aldgate, or East Smithfield345997011,5221,4492,9712,883
Holy Trinity, Minories42012159142301449
St. Katherine by the Tower14715923182104
Old Tower Without6119333265233
3577,2298104538,17235,38073,55270,386

Density of population—The total area as given in the above table is 357 statute acres. This
includes in respect of the constituent parishes of St. Botolph without Aldgate and St. Katherine by the
Tower some 10 acres of non-tidal water. Dealing then with an area of 347 acres and with the estimated
population† at the middle of 1894, the density of population in Whitechapel is found to be 215 persons
per acre. An important consideration, however, which requires to be borne in mind, is the remarkable
inequality of concentration of persons upon area in different parts of the district. Thus on the basis
of the 1891 census populations there were 11 persons per acre in Old Tower Without and 428 persons
per acre in Old Artillery Ground. These two districts are, however, both small. On considering the
matter from a more comprehensive point of view, it may be noted that a considerable area in the
southern part of Whitechapel is largely commercial in character, and an approximate idea of the
density of population in residential Whitechapel can be obtained by exclusion of the last four divisions
of the above table altogether. (No allowance is then made for the considerable areas of a nonresidential
character in Whitechapel civil parish, notably that occupied by the London Tilbury and
Southend Railway Company, but the data for making such allowance are not available.) The density
of population of residential Whitechapel at the present time worked out on these lines will be found to
be about 240 persons per acre. It may be added that in the large sub-district of Spitalfields the
census figures give 313 persons per acre.
In the annual report of the Council's medical officer for the year 1892 the density for the
administrative county of London at the middle of that year is given as 57 persons to an acre, and of the
various sanitary districts, St. George-the-Martyr, Southwark, has the greatest density of population
(211 persons to an acre), Whitechapel occupying the second place. The density of population in residential
Whitechapel, as above defined, is however appreciably greater than that of St. George-theMartyr,
Southwark, and the modified Whitechapel is seen to be more densely populated than any
sanitary district in London, and to have more than four times as many persons as are found per acre in
the administrative county of London, taken as a whole.
Poverty and associated conditions.—Mr. Charles Booth has tested London registration
districts‡ in various ways in connection with poverty. The registration Whitechapel, as already seen,
so nearly corresponds with the sanitary area, that his results may be used in illustration of the
conditions which obtain in the latter.
Mr. Booth gives the numerical order in which the districts stand when tested in six different
ways, and then arranges them in a combined or mean order, noting how little this combined order
varies from any of the six, and how little on the whole they vary among themselves.
Whitechapel stands—7tli in respect of poverty.
3rd „ domestic crowding.
2nd „ excess of young married females.
1st ,, surplus unmarried males.
11th „ birth rate.
8th „ death rate.
and 3rd in the combined or mean order.
*Entire Parish of Whitechapel, except a small part, containing five inhabited houses and 42 population,
which is included in the City of London.
† The estimated population of the sanitary district (calculated on the census populations of the above table)
works out at 74,611.
‡ Mr. Booth dealt with 27 districts. Of the 30 districts recognised by the Registrar-General, he combined
three, viz., the Strand, St. Giles, and Soho, and he omitted the City.