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"Kensington," prior to 1st January, 1885, was the title
of a Registration District, No. 1 on the Registrar-General.s
list, comprising the parishes of Kensington and Paddington.
Since that date the parish of Kensington has been constituted a
separate Registration District, and is numbered 1b. It contains
2,190 acres according to the Registrar-General; but in your
Vestry.s Annual Report the area is given as 2,245 acres. In
1871 the enumerated houses were 15,735, in 1881, 20,103 ;
increase, 4,368. In 1871 the population was 120,299 ; in 1881,
163,151 ; increase, 42,852. At the middle of 1888 the inhabited
houses were some 21,566, and the estimated population 177,000.
Registration Sub-Districts.—For registration purposes
the parish is unequally divided into two sub-districts, " Kensington
Town," hereinafter for brevity designated "Town,"
and " Brompton .. The Town sub-district comprises an area of
1,497 acres, the area of Brompton being 693 acres. The population
of the Town sub-district at the middle of 1888 was about
129,500, and that of Brompton 47,500. The Town sub-district
still includes some open spaces, as Holland Park and NottingBarn
Farm. The Brompton sub-district, in which the builder
has been busy of late years, many of the new houses being of a
palatial character, is now nearly covered. The West London or
Brompton Cemetery, Government property, is in this subdistrict
; the Kensal Green Cemetery, in private ownership, in
the Town sub district.
The sub-districts present marked differences, which must
be borne in mind in any comparison of their vital statistics. In
Brompton the rich and well-to do form a large proportion of the
population, whilst in the Town sub-district there is a considerable
and probably an increasing percentage of persons of the
poorer classes. The poor in Kensington, however, are better
off in one respect than the poor in some other parts of the
Metropolis, in that, for the most part, they live in houses fairly