“The large decrease of population (3,754 in last decade), coupled with the fact that the rateable value still has an upward tendency, clearly shows that the character of the parish is undergoing rapid change—offices, warehouses, and clubs taking the place of residences as the centre of trade continues to increase and move westward, and greater facilities are afforded for business men to live in the suburbs.”
Some of the Medical Officers of Health were perturbed by the class of persons coming into their district. Thus the Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel drew attention to the fact that of the 70,435 people in his parish no fewer than 9,660 were foreigners, mostly Russian and Polish Jews. Others of them were feeling anxious under the ever increasing numbers.
The Medical Officer of Health for Paddington wrote (1881):—
“Occupying, as the population of Paddington does, a limited area with definite boundaries which do not admit of extension, a continually increasing population can only mean a continually increasing complexity of the problems of sanitation.”
Upon one most interesting point as regarded the influx of population into London the Medical Officer of Health for Lambeth threw some valuable light.[150]
“The evil of overcrowding is aggravated by causes which derive their origin from the effects of that condition itself. A lowered standard of health, always the accompaniment of close building, is a factor in the further increase of pressure in an already congested district. An unsatisfied demand in the labour market for physical strength is a necessary outcome of that quality in the district affected. Muscle and bone in such a locality is at a premium, and that which cannot be supplied in its full development from within must be sought and obtained from without.”
“Here, then, is a vicious circle of concurrent cause and effect. Overcrowding is the cause of physical weakness: physical weakness results in an unsatisfied demand in the labour market: the unsatisfied demand is the cause of an influx from without: again that influx results in overcrowding.”
Once, then, that the influx of the physically strong began to diminish—the element which had contributed most to the maintenance of the physical vigour and health of the population of London—it was evident that deterioration would ensue, and the only means of counteracting that result was to improve to the utmost possible the sanitary conditions in which the people lived.
The census of 1881 is remarkable as being the last to show an increase of country-born immigrants into London. That tide was soon to begin to ebb.