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6
NATURAL AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS.
The population is largely residential, and consists chiefly
of people whose occupation lies outside the urban area.
Those employed in the District apart from tradesmen and
their employees, are mainly skilled workers at dental manufacturing,
lithographic, photographic, film, printing, leather
dressing, and optical works.
Poor Law relief is supplied by a large Workhouse and
Infirmary, the Medical Officers and Relieving Officer being
resident in the District.
A new Infirmary to contain 190 beds is now being
erected for the largely increased needs of the Union.
The Victoria Cottage Hospital affords additional medical
relief for the working and artisan classes.
The District is especially rich in almshouses.
The Council have an Estate of 14 acres for the Housing
of the Working Classes, and have erected 52 cottages thereon.
This number is to be increased as occasion demands until
the estate is fully developed.
Twelve additional cottages homes have been erected in
the District by a certain firm for the old persons whom they
have pensioned.
POPULATION.
The population of Barnet, including Totteridge which
was taken into the District during the year, was in 1911
(census year) 11,335.
In estimating the population of the District the calculations
are made to Midsummer.
The method of estimating the Population adopted by the
Registrar-General is based on the supposition that the rate of
increase during the decennial period 1911 to 1921 will be at
the same rate as in the previous decennial period.
Such an estimate would be approximately correct in a
District where the growth is more or less on a natural basis,
viz., excess of births over deaths; but in Barnet, occupying
as it does the position of a suburb of London, this method is
inapplicable, owing to the fluctuation of the population.