View report page

44
in St. Giles, it is not sufficient to use the large and compound sub-districts of the
registrars, I have divided the district for my purposes into ten small sub-divisions,
each of which has certain individual features. The workhouse may be investigated as
a separate eleventh locality by itself. My ten sub-divisions are as follows:—
A. Bedford Square locality—bounded by Gower Street, Tottenham Court
Road, and Great Russell Street, comprising 29 acres, of which four may be deducted
for Bedford Square.
B. Russell Square locality.—Between Gower Street, Great Russell Street,
Southampton Row, and Woburn Place, 67 acres, 2 being deducted for Squares, and
for the open space of the British Museum.
C. Great Coram Street locality.—From Woburn Place to the north and east
boundaries of the district, 28 acres.
D. Bloomsbury Square locality.—Between the lines of Great Russell Street
and Bloomsbury Place on the North, and of Oxford Street and Holborn to the South,
30 acres, of which 3 may be taken out for Bloomsbury Square.
E. Church Lane locality.—Between Oxford Street, Holborn, Broad Street,
and High Street, 12| acres.
F. Dudley Street locality.—Bounded by Crown Street, High Street, and
Great and Little St. Andrew's Streets, 13 acres.
G. Short's Gardens locality.—The group of houses between Broad Street,
Drury Lane, Castle Street, and St. Andrew's Streets, 14½ acres. Here are the Workhouse
and Lying-in Hospital.
H & K. Northern Drury Lane and Southern Drury Lane localities.—The
two extending between Drury Lane, Holborn, Little Queen Street, and Lincoln's Inn
Fields, to the Southern extremity of the district, the two being divided by Great
Queen Street, and comprising 14 acres each.
L. Lincoln's Inn Fields locality—taking in all the houses of Lincoln's Inn
Fields, and of the Streets around up to the boundaries of the district. Of the 23
acres, ten are to" be deducted in estimating the habitable space.
The first four and the last of these sub-divisions may be stated in general terms
to consist of good class streets and houses, although particular exceptions will be found,
the many low Courts about Little Coram Street in district C, and between Holborn and
Lincoln's Inn Fields of the last locality. The remainder of the ten sub-divisions however,
consist of a majority of poor Streets and the lower class of houses, and are for
the most part densely populated.
I must assume a certain local knowledge of the district, and shall refer hereafter
to these sub-divisions without further specifying their distinguishing characters.
The enquiry of the predominance of disease in one or other of these must
needs be one of extreme labour, involving an examination of every death in every Street,
but the facts that will result will be of more definite application than if the enquiry
were confined to the the three sub-districts. I think much too of the mass of information
we shall have at our disposal for comparison with succeeding years, a comparison
which I trust may show each year a progressive improvement in the health of the
district.