View report page

74
TWENTY YEARS OF FIGURES
During the late nineteen-twenties many houses were built in the
districts which later became the Urban District of Harrow, with a result
that the population of about fifty thousand in 1921 became ninety-seven
thousand by 1931. In the early nineteen-thirties building activity was
still very marked, and in 1934 4,331 houses were put up here, most of these
being in the Hendon Rural District. There was some slowing down in
the rate of new building until its arrest as a result of the beginning of the
War in 1939. These new houses meant new families coming here and the
population increased by nearly fifty per cent, from the 132,000 in 1934
to the 190,000 in 1939.
Although in some districts even before the war it seemed inevitable
that the time was coming when local authorities would be looked to to be
responsible for the housing of the so-called working classes, there was
little indication that that would be the position in this district. For many
of the years just before the war the housing situation here, as judged by
the number of notice boards outside houses indicating that they were for
sale or were to be let, was easy. The Council which took over some
houses from the constituent authorities prepared a modest building
programme ; while the London County Council acquired the land on
which after the war they built the houses of the Headstone estate. At one
time when building was proceeding apace, there seemed to be only the
two considerations ; the one that the accepted density should not be
exceeded, the other that industry should not be encouraged. With the
experience later acquired perhaps to neither of these aspects would so
much attention again be paid. While low density development is desirable,
it is very doubtful if the best method of achieving this is by a uniform
sprawl, under which each house has its own garden, all building plots
being of the same size. Then, too, with the freedom from nuisance of
much of to-day's light industry, there might by this have been more of the
civic consciousness so often hoped for if more of the residents worked
locally and if the district were less of a dormitory. But to one point
little enough attention seemed to have been paid and that was the limit
of development. Too little land was left. To-day it would have been
much better for 200,000 of the people in the district if houses for the other
20,000 had not been put up.
The increase in population is reflected in an annual increase in the
number of births. But at the same time the birth rate was higher than
that for the country as a whole. This would come about because the
population moving into the district consisted more of the younger parents
With their small children. This resulted in an unbalanced age composition
of the population, containing an undue proportion of those ages likely
to have more children. With the passing years the birth rate fell, even to
levels below that of the country as a whole. Another effect of this
unbalanced age composition was that because there would be in the
number of persons living in the district at any time a smaller proportion of
those of higher ages (to balance the higher proportion of those in the
younger age groups) there was each year a smaller number of deaths than
would have occurred in a population of the same size, but of normal age