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the Registrar-General's Preliminary Report, just issued, I find he gives
the number of houses inhabited on the 4th of April, 1881, the day the
census was taken, at only 16,663, a difference of 1058. I was at first rather
staggered by this discrepancy; but upon making further enquiries, I find
it may be accounted for to a considerable extent by the fact that the
Registrar-General counts each block of tenements in the Improved
Industrial Dwellings as one house only, though many of these blocks
contain ten separate dwellings, each assessed and appearing in the rate
books as a "house," and that this applies to all buildings of a like nature
having a common staircase.*
Another disturbing element is the compound householder. Landlords
of small house property have the power, and usually elect, to "compound"
for their rates; that is to say, they pay on the whole of their house
property, whether occupied or not, upon the condition of receiving back
a handsome discount. This plan saves endless bother and confusion to
the collectors, but it upsets my calculations, as a landlord may have half
his houses empty, but, as he pays rates on each, every one appears in the
collectors' books as occupied. I was quite ignorant of this until a few
weeks back, and in previous reports had adopted the plan of checking my
estimate of population by the number of houses shown by the rate books,
with the result of falling into the error of over-estimating.
The number of houses shown by the rate books, though varying somewhat
from year to year, remains considerably less than in 1875, in which
year there were 17,945. Then came the process of demolition by the
Great Eastern Railway Company, the Metropolitan Board of "Works, and
the School Board. The number of dwellings gradually diminished till
1878, since that year they have been slowly increasing again, chiefly by
the action of the various companies for the erection of large blocks of
Industrial Dwellings. Each tenement of these, though separately assessed
and counting in the rate books as a house, accommodates fewer inhabitants
than an average dwelling. The average number of inhabitants in each
tenement of the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company on the Waterlow
Estate is only about five persons, while that for the whole parish is about
seven per house, and for the whole of the Metropolis about eight. It
must be borne in mind, however, that the Metropolitan average is
* By the 5th section of the Parliamentary and Municipal Registration Act, 1878, it is
enacted that the term "dwelling-house" shall include any part of a house where that part is
separately occupied as a dwelling.