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REPORT.
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Gentlemen,
I beg to submit for your consideration my Twenty-third
Annual Report. It deals with the vital and mortal statistics of
Bethnal Green for the year 1898.
POPULATION.
The initial difficulty a Medical Officer of Health has to face in
the preparation of a report of this nature is to estimate the population
of the district under his charge. Upon the accuracy of this
estimate depends the value of the whole of the statistics in the
report. My difficulties this year are increased by the facts that three
years are elapsed since the census enumeration of 1896, and that
the population to be dealt with is a shifting one. The incursion of
Jewish aliens continues and is increasing. Complaints of the overcrowding
caused by these people are frequent, though difficult to
verify and still more difficult to remedy. The Boundary Street
Area, cleared more than eight years ago by the London County
Council, has been partially re-built, and now houses between five
and six thousand persons. Most of these are new-comers; for we
can only trace about eleven families of the old residents of Friars'
Mount amongst them. In addition to the Boundary Street Area,
several other sites have been cleared by private owners, and blocks
of model dwellings have been erected upon them. The tenements
in these new blocks are eagerly competed for and are let even before
they are ready for occupation. During the past year 107 houses
have been demolished and 241 tenements or new premises have
been completed and occupied, and still the cry goes up for more
house-room.