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REDUCTION IN POPULATION.
For the purposes of the Equalisation of Rates Act, the
authority making the poor rate is required to make a return annually
of the total number of houses entered in the rate book. Such return
has to be forwarded to the Local Government Board, and the
Registrar General is then required to make an estimate of the
population of each parish on the 6th April in each year.
Estimates based upon the returns so forwarded to the
Registrar General have been made and published, from which
it appears that the population, which, at the time of the census
in 1891, stood at 27,177, had been reduced, in April, 1894, to
24,609, a decrease of 9-45 per cent. This diminution in the
number of inhabitants is a serious matter for the ratepayers of
the district—for those of the parish of St. Saviour more particularly—seeing
that the amount of grant receivable out of the
equalisation fund is proportioned to the number of inhabitants,
while that of the contribution payable depends upon the rateable
value, which has a tendency to increase slightly, and it will make
a difference of about £550 in respect of the current year.
The estimate of the Registrar General will shortly be subjected
to verification or correction, inasmuch as the Act requires
that a census shall be taken of the number of inhabitants
quinquennially, the first to be taken on the night of Sunday,
the 29th March, 1896. The exact number will then be ascertained
and made known in the form of census returns.
SANITARY STAFF.
In the last Annual Report (page 22), an extract was presented
from the report of the Medical Officer of Health (Mr. Shirley F.
Murphy) to the London County Council on the sanitary
condition of the district, dated December, 1893, in which he
expressed an opinion that two Sanitary Inspectors were insufficient
for the district: a copy of the letter which was addressed to the
Council in reply thereto in July, 1894, was also published urging
that the Board had already in its employ a larger number ot