Statistics of London

Abstract

THE latest volume of “London Statistics,” that for 1936–38 (London: P. S. King and Son, Ltd., 15s. 6d.) raises once more in an acute and realistic form some of the most vital and interesting questions in social science and economics and in practical statesmanship that we of the present generation have to face. Among them not the least significant are those concerned with population movements to and from the London area and within that area. The population of this Greater London increased during 1937 by 80,000, and numbered 8,655,000 before evacuation, as compared with 7,000,000 for New York. This huge total is about double that of the administrative county over which the L.C.C. has partial control and from which there has been continuous migration since 1901. In that year the population of the administrative county was 4,536,267, but it has steadily declined, so that in 1938 it was 4,062,800. This has involved among other things difficult readjustments in educational facilities, especially elementary schools; for the decrease in elementary school children from 900,000 in 1915 to 543,000 in 1937 is very much greater proportionately than that in the total population. In this connexion it is interesting to note that, of the 50,000 children leaving elementary schools in 1937, 89 boys and 127 girls were described as of “super-normal” mental condition.