View report page

22
areas. Unmarried women are most numerous also in these West end
boroughs, and the ratio of married and widowed to the total is high in
the case of men. Westminster is much the same but the number of
single men and women is greater than would be expected. Lewisham
has an excess of females corresponding more nearly to the average
excess for the whole County. In industrial areas the populations
become younger, as in Battersea, Camber well, Deptford and Woolwich,
where the female preponderance and average ages are lower than the
County average, though for both males and females the proportion
married or widowed are still rather above the County as a whole. The
extreme group where the population is youngest, where the males are
nearly but not quite as numerous as the females, where there is a high
proportion of children, are the inner boroughs of Bermondsey, Bethnal
Green, Finsbury, Poplar, Shoreditch, Southwark and Stepney. Coming
between this last group and the Deptford, Woolwich group, is
Greenwich.
Occupations. There is a slight decline in the proportion occupied
both for males and females, but unmarried females at work have
increased in number. This decline among males is most marked under
16 years. There is practically no employment under 14 years, and
that between 14 and 16 has fallen by 16 per cent. Men are starting
work later and continuing it longer than 10 years ago. The last.
mentioned probably spells increased vitality and lessened invalidity in
later life. There is remarkably little evidence to show that old age
pensions have lessened the proportion of men employed at ages over
70. More females are at work between 16 and 25. At the 1921 census
employment on the part of women seemed more a matter of choice
than of necessity as compared with 1911.
Occupations in the London Boroughs. Males—Nearly all males
of working age are upon the labour market and only about one.third of
all females. Commerce and finance employ the largest proportion of
workers, being in the County 102 per 1,000 of all males over 12 years.
I his proportion varies from 179 per 1,000 in Hampstead to 52 in
Bermondsey ; they are chiefly shopkeepers and their assistants.
Proprietors and managers of dealing businesses. Not all shopkeepers,
though generally so elsewhere, reach the exceptional proportion
of 72 per 1,000 in Hampstead. Bermondsey with 18 and Poplar with
19 are lowest in the scale, where the smallest proportion of shop
assistants are found. Fulham has the largest number of shop assistants
probably mostly employed outside their borough of residence. Commercial
travellers per 1,000 population are most numerous in Stoke