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9
STATISTICS AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS
OF THE AREA.
Area (in acres) 12,558
Registrar-General's estimate of resident population,
mid-year, 1934 132,049
Number of inhabited houses (end of 1934) according
to Rate Books 38,024
Rateable value £1,439,859
Sum represented by a penny rate £5,530
Social Conditions of Inhabitants.
Taken as a whole the district is residential in character, most
of the employed working outside the area. Industry in the former
Harrow-on-the-Hill area is practically limited to one small group
of factories and workshops, employing less than 100 together, the
only concern in this part of the district being a laundry engaging
some 250 workers. The former Hendon Rural area, once arable
land, has been converted into pasture land, and this in its turn is
very rapidly being encroached on by the erection of housing estates.
Most of the recent rapid development in the district has occurred
in the 9,000 acres of this part, of which at the end of the year there
were some 3,500 acres available for development. Wealdstone, of
the three constituent districts, is the most industrialised. Its
1,000 acres at the end of 1933 held 7,643 houses, inhabiting some
30,000 persons. The industries, most of which are centrally
situated, leaving the outlying areas residential in character, include
printing works, photographic works, brush making works, sheet
metal works, cabinet making works, glass works, and joinery
works. None of the local forms of employment prejudicially
affect the health of the workers.
There is comparatively little unemployment in the district.
The winter (December) figures reach 1,800 males and some 200
females, the number of unemployed males falling in the spring
(April) to about half this figure. This reduction is chiefly due to
the engagement of employees in the building trades.