The reports of many of the Medical Officers of Health throw much additional light upon, and explain or elucidate the facts set out in the Census, and carry on the narrative into later years of the matters recorded by the Census Commissioners.
Thus, as regarded the reduction of the population in the central group of parishes, the Medical Officer of Health for the Strand District ascribed it in part to the new Law Courts, and to the circumstance that residential houses were, in increasing numbers, becoming converted into business premises.
“But,” he added, “it is also probably in some measure due to the greater facilities for locomotion to suburban homes”; which is notable as almost, if not absolutely, the first recognition of this cause affecting the population.
In St. James’, the decrease of population was “due to the fact that the district had increasingly become the centre for clubs, hotels, and splendid shops. The result had been an enormous rise in the value of houses, and a gradual extrusion of the less wealthy and important residents.”
In St. George-in-the-East, the Medical Officer of Health stated that:—
“The decrease of population was due to houses being taken by a railway company, by the Poor Law Guardians for an infirmary, for a church, &c.”
How considerable the clearances were in some districts may be inferred from the figures given by the Medical Officer of Health for St. Giles’ in 1871.
“The clearances in the City of London for the purposes of erecting a new market, and a viaduct, and in the Strand district to form a site for the proposed Law Courts, have aggravated the evil of overcrowding. To effect these improvements (or chiefly so) the large number of 18,358 persons have been removed. Strand, 6,998; St. Sepulchre (City), 4,188; St. Bride (City), 4,211; Saffron Hill, 2,961.”
And in St. Olave, on the south side of the river, the Medical Officer of Health wrote:—