To-day their functions are no less active; the advent of the bicycle and the motor-car makes it more necessary than ever that they should be there to mark distance and direction.
No more humourous aspect has ever been remarked than the anecdote recounted by a nineteenth-century historian of the hunt of one Jedediah Jones for the imaginary or long since departed "Hicks' Hall," from which the mile-stones, cryptogrammatically, stated that "this stone was ten (nine, eight, etc.) miles from Hicks' Hall." The individual in question never was able to find the mythical "Hicks' Hall," nor the equally vague "Standard in Cornhill," the latter being referred to by an accommodating 'bus driver in this wise: "Put ye down at the 'Standard in Cornhill?'—that's a good one! I should like to know who ever seed the 'Standard in Cornhill.' Ve knows the 'Svan wi' Two Necks' and the 'Vite Horse' in Piccadilly, but I never heerd of anybody that ever seed the 'Standard in Cornhill.' Ve simply reckons by it."
The suburbs of London in Dickens' time were full of such puzzling mile-stones. As late as 1831 a gate existed at Tyburn turnpike, and so, as if marking the distinction between London and the country, the mile-stones read from Tyburn.
Hyde Park Corner is still used in a similar way. Other stones read merely from London, but, as it would be difficult to know what part of London might best be taken to suit the purposes of the majority, the statement seems as vague as was Hicks' Hall. Why not, as a writer of the day expressed it, measure from the G. P. O.? which to the stranger might prove quite as unintelligible, meaning in this case, however, General Post-Office.
The population return of 1831 shows a plan with a circle drawn eight miles from the centre, a region which then comprised 1,776,000 inhabitants. By 1841 the circle was reduced to a radius of one-half, and the population was still as great as that contained in the larger circle of a decade before. Thus the history of the growth of London shows that its greatest activities came with the beginning of the Victorian era.
By the census of 1861, the population of the City—the E. C. District—was only 112,247; while including that with the entire metropolis, the number was 2,803,034, or twenty-five times as great as the former. It may here be remarked that the non-resident, or, more properly, "non-sleeping" population of the City is becoming larger every year, on account of the substitution of public buildings, railway stations and viaducts, and large warehouses, in place of ordinary dwelling-houses. Fewer and fewer people live in the City. In 1851, the number was 127,869; it lessened by more than 15,000 between that year and 1861; while the population of the whole metropolis increased by as many as 440,000 in the same space of time.
In 1870, when Dickens was still living, the whole population was computed at 3,251,804, and the E. C. population was further reduced to 74,732.
In 1901 the "City" contained only 3,900 inhabited houses, and but 27,664 persons composed the night population.
The territorial limits or extent of London must vary greatly according as to whether one refers to "The City," "London proper," or "Greater London," a phrase which is generally understood of the people as comprehending not only the contiguous suburbs of a city, but those residential communities closely allied thereto, and drawing, as it were, their support from it. If the latter, there seems no reason why London might not well be thought to include pretty much all of Kent and Surrey,—the home counties lying immediately south of the Thames,—though in reality one very soon gets into green fields in this direction, and but for the ominous signs of the builder and the enigmatic references of the native to the "city" or "town," the stranger, at least, might think himself actually far from the madding throng.
For a fact this is not so, and local life centres, even now, as it did in days gone by, very much around the happenings of the day in London itself.