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Nor is this result merely apparent, and due to happy statistical
coincidence: a study of the figures for the intervening years
shews that the improvement has been practically one of annual
gradation.
The causes of this will be referred to in the appropriate place in
some detail, but I desire to call particular attention to it here. On
page 60 is a table which shews, year by year, the number of
inhabited houses as computed each Midsummer by the ratecollectors
; and, from a study of this and from other facts, I reckon
the population of the whole district for 1910 to have been 32,500
and the respective populations of the two parishes of Barnes and
Mortlake to have been 15,200 and 17,300.
In the last ten years the district has, then, very nearly
doubled the number of its inhabitants; and so great a relative
change cannot have occurred without a profound variation in the
character of the community, and in outward seeming.
The change is, I suppose, to be chronicled as one of development
" ; and the figures that I have to record at any rate shew that
the process, let it be called what it may, has not been accompanied
by the more manifest ill effects of urbanization, and that, so far as
morbidity and liability to zymotic disease are concerned, there has
been a very distinct advance on the days when Barnes was more
picturesque, but very much less healthy.
Twenty, and indeed even fewer years ago, Barnes and Mortlake
were two isolated villages, with local life and interests. In a very
few years more they will be but two cubicles in the great dormitories
for London workers.
So far as Barnes proper is concerned the houses erected during
the year may be described as mostly of a superior class, of rentals
exceeding £40 and £50 per year. In Mortlake and Sheen, on the