APPENDIX.

EXTRACT

FROM

THE POPULATION RETURN,

PUBLISHED ON THE AUTHORITY OF AN ACT PASSED IN THE FIFTY-FIRST GEO. III.

THE Metropolis of the British Empire, being situated in the two counties of Middlesex and Surrey, could not be distinctly noticed in any preceding part of the Parish Register Abstract; its population is exhibited in five divisions, and amounts to one million, nine thousand, five hundred and forty-six persons; but considering that fourteen thousand arrivals of shipping, annually, makes a constant, though fluctuating accession to its population, to a larger amount than elsewhere; a twenty-fifth part, instead of a thirtieth part, is added, in forming a comparison with the Parish Register Returns. With this addition, the Metropolis, in the year 1801, con

tained nine hundred thousand inhabitants; in 1811, one million and fifty thousand.

3.-City and Liberties? 130,000 152,000 165,000 168,600

of Westminster.. S

4.-Out Parishes, within the Bills of Mortality

5.-Parishes,not within the Bills of Mortality

326,900 357,600 477,700 593,700

9,150 22,350 123,000 162,000

Total of the Metropolis 674,350 676,250 900,000 1,050,000

1. The walls of the ancient City of London included a space, now in the middle of the Metropolis, about one mile and a half in length, from east to west, and rather more than half a mile in breadth. The Population has diminished above three-fifths since the beginning of the last century; many streets having been widened, and public buildings and warehouses erected, whereby the number of inhabitants has been thus lessened.

2. The City of London without the walls, is

an extension of the same ancient city, and is under the same jurisdiction. In computing the increase or diminution of the Population of this district, by means of the parish registers, two difficulties occur; first, because several of the parishes, which form part of it, extend so far beyond its limits, as almost to double the amount of population, if these parishes are included entire. It has, therefore, been necessary to ascertain the increase or diminution upon the entire parishes, and afterwards to apportion it between the City without the walls, and the outparishes, the enumeration returns of the parts within the City and without being distinct. The other difficulty arises from the disputed jurisdiction of the City of London, as to the Borough of Southwark, a claim which has not been substantiated; and the five Southwark parishes are accordingly here reckoned among the "outparishes.

3. The City of Westminster, once an episcopal see, and now the seat of government, adjoins the City of London, extending westward.

4. The appellation of the Out-parishes, is taken from the London Bills of Mortality, which were first used in the year 1562; and from 1603, have been kept in regular series. These bills were intended to afford timely notice of any alarming increase of the plague, from which

London was then seldom free. But the crowded part of the city was purified by the memorable conflagration of 1666; in the preceding year, 68,596 persons had died of the plague, which has since entirely disappeared. The bills of mortality purport to exhibit the number of christenings and burials, but are not to be relied for the full number of either. A compaupon rison of the results of these bills is subjoined.

Baptisms and Burials within the London Bills of Mortality.

Anterior to the year 1750, this comparison is not perfect, eleven parishes having been brought into the bills of mortality, between the years 1726 and 1745.

The number of unregistered interments in the Metropolis, has been a question much agitated, on occasion of forming computations for life annuities, and for other purposes. In the last six months of 1794, it was ascertained by the collector of the then tax on burials, that 3,148 persons were interred without being registered; and it is not likely that the whole number of interments, or even of burial grounds, were discoverable for the purpose of taxation. If it be assumed that, on account of the unregistered interments, a third part (about 7000 annually) may be added to the registered burials, the mortality of the Metropolis, in 1700, was one in twenty-five; in 1750, one in twenty-one; in 1801, (and the four preceding years) one in thirty-five; since that, only one in thirty-eight; thus shewing a gradual improvement in the health of the Metropolis, to a large amount; but it was to be expected that the extension of population over a larger space than formerly would have this salutary effect.

5.-A few parishes, now forming part of the Metropolis, have not yet been brought into the bills of mortality. The rapid increase of the

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