View report page

63
any risk of exaggeration in a favourable sense. I now find, as the
result of
THE CENSUS,
that the population in July, 1880, could not have been less than
159,700 persons, which number is taken throughout this Report as
the basis of calculation of birth and death rates, &c. My estimate
was sufficiently near the actual to justify, so far as I can judge at
present, the retention of the statistics of the decade; but this is a
question that I shall have further and better opportunities of considering
when the details of the census shall have been published.
It may be mentioned that the parish was divided for the Census
into 70 or 80 blocks, each of which was placed in the charge of
an Enumerator. The return made by the Enumerator shews the
number of houses in the block, the number of "heads of families,"
and the population stated in males and females. A transcript of
the information thus condensed would have been of value for
statistical purposes, and to enable me to ascertain the death-rate
in much more minute sub-divisions of the parish than is practicable
otherwise, as the weekly returns are simply for the two registration
sub-districts. At my request your Vestry made application to the
Registrar-General to sanction an arrangement whereby such information
might have been obtained from the registrars "for purely
statistical purposes." But although the granting of this request
would not have delayed the returns by the registrars to the head
office by a single hour, the Registrar-General declined to allow the
information to be supplied "for any purpose whatever."
The unrevised figures of the Census, as presented to your
Vestry by Messrs. Barnes and Hume, the registrars for the Town
and Brompton Sub-districts respectively, are set out in the subjoined
tables.