Gallery, the Houses of Parliament, the new Law Courts, and the whole of Belgravia and the West End beyond, have all arisen during the last 80 years. An important event in the domestic history of the city was the commencement of gas-lighting in 1807. (Before 1716 the provisions for street-lighting were very imperfect, but in that year an act was passed ordering every householder to hang out a light before his door from six in the evening till eleven.) From that time to the present London has been actively engaged, by the laying out of spacious thoroughfares and the construction of handsome edifices, in making good its claim to be not only the largest, but also one of the finest cities in the world. The electric light has hitherto been used comparatively little in the London streets; but in 1889 this question was definitely taken in hand by the Board of Trade and the County Council, and it seems probable that the development of systematic lighting by electricity will now be steady and rapid. No authentic estimate of the population of London can be traced farther back than two centuries. Nor is it easy to determine the area covered by buildings at different periods. At one time the 'City within the Walls' comprised all; afterwards was added the 'City without the Walls'; then the city and liberties of Westminster; then the borough of Southwark, S. of the river; then numerous parishes between the two cities; and lastly other parishes forming an encircling belt around the whole. All these component elements at length came to be embraced under the name of 'London'. The population was about 700,000 in the year 1700, about 900,000 in 1800, and 1,300,000 in 1821. Each subsequent decennial census included a larger area than the one that preceded it. The original 'City' of London, covering little more than 1 square mile, has in this way expanded to a great metropolis of fully 120 square miles, containing, in 1881, a population of 3,814,571 persons (see p. 69). Extension of commerce has accompanied the growth of population. Statistics of trade in past centuries are wanting; but at the present time London supplies half the total customs-revenue of the kingdom. One-fourth of the whole ship tonnage of England, and one-fourth of the entire exports, are centred in the port of London. (For fuller statistical information, see below, Section 20.) 20. Topography and Statistics. Topography. The city of London is built upon a tract of undulating clay soil, which extends irregularly along the valley of the Thames from a point near Reading to Harwich and Herne Bay at the mouth of the river, a distance of about 120 miles. It is divided into two portions by the river Thames, which, rising in the Cotswold Hills in Gloucestershire, is from its source down to its mouth in the German Ocean at Sheerness 230 M. in length, and is navigable for a distance of 50 M. - The southern and less important part of London (Southwark and Lambeth) lies in the counties of Surrey and Kent; the northern and principal portion in Middlesex and Essex. The latter part of the immense city may be divided, in accordance with its general characteristics, into two great halves (not taking into account the extensive outlying districts on the N. and the N.E., which are comparatively uninteresting to strangers): I. The City and the East End, consisting of that part of London which lies to the E. of the Temple, form the commercial and money-making quarter of the metropolis. It embraces the Port, the Docks, the Custom House, the Bank, the Exchange, the innumerable counting-houses of merchants, money-changers, brokers, and underwriters, the General Post Office, the printing and publishing offices of the Times, the legal corporations of the Inns of Court, and the Cathedral of St. Paul's, towering above them all. II. The West End, or that part of the town to the W. of the Temple, is the quarter of London which spends money, makes laws, and regulates the fashions. It contains the Palace of the Queen, the Mansions of the aristocracy, the Clubs, Museums, Picture Galleries, Theatres, Barracks, Government Offices, Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey; and it is the special locality for parks, squares, and gardens, for gorgeous equipages and powdered lackeys. Besides these great divisions, the following districts are distinguished by their population and leading occupations: I. On the LEFT BANK of the Thames: (a) To the E. of the City is the so-called Long Shore, which extends along the bank of the Thames, and is chiefly composed of quays, wharves, store-houses, and engine-factories, and inhabited by shipwrights, lightermen, sailors, and marine store dealers. (b) Whitechapel, with sugar-bakeries and their German workmen. (c) Houndsditch and the Minories, the quarters of the Jews. (d) Bethnal Green and Spitalfields to the N., and part of Shoreditch, form a manufacturing district, occupied to a large extent by silk-weavers, partly descended from the French Protestants (Huguenots) who took refuge in England after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. (e) Clerkenwell, between Islington and Hatton Garden, the district of watch-makers and metal-workers. (f) Paternoster Row, near St. Paul's Cathedral, the focus of the book-trade. (g) Chancery Lane and the Inns of Court, the headquarters of barristers, solicitors, and law-stationers. II. In Surrey, on the RIGHT BANK of the Thames: (a) Southwark and Lambeth, containing numerous potteries, glass-works, machine-factories, breweries, and hop-warehouses. (b) Bermondsey, famous for its tanneries, glue-factories, and wool-warehouses. (c) Rotherhithe, farther to the E., chiefly inhabited by sailors, ship-carpenters, coalheavers, and bargemen. By the Redistribution Bill of 1885 London is divided for parliamentary purposes into the City Proper, returning two members of parliament, and 27 metropolitan boroughs, comprising 59 single member districts. London University also returns one member. Gallery, the Houses of Parliament, the new Law Courts, and the whole of Belgravia and the West End beyond, have all arisen during the last 80 years. An important event in the domestic history of the city was the commencement of gas-lighting in 1807. (Before 1716 the provisions for street-lighting were very imperfect, but in that year an act was passed ordering every householder to hang out a light before his door from six in the evening till eleven.) From that time to the present London has been actively engaged, by the laying out of spacious thoroughfares and the construction of handsome edifices, in making good its claim to be not only the largest, but also one of the finest cities in the world. The electric light has hitherto been used comparatively little in the London streets; but in 1889 this question was definitely taken in hand by the Board of Trade and the County Council, and it seems probable that the development of systematic lighting by electricity will now be steady and rapid. No authentic estimate of the population of London can be traced farther back than two centuries. Nor is it easy to determine the area covered by buildings at different periods. At one time the 'City within the Walls' comprised all; afterwards was added the 'City without the Walls'; then the city and liberties of Westminster; then the borough of Southwark, S. of the river; then numerous parishes between the two cities; and lastly other parishes forming an encircling belt around the whole. All these component elements at length came to be embraced under the name of 'London'. The population was about 700,000 in the year 1700, about 900,000 in 1800, and 1,300,000 in 1821. Each subsequent decennial census included a larger area than the one that preceded it. The original 'City' of London, covering little more than 1 square mile, has in this way expanded to a great metropolis of fully 120 square miles, containing, in 1881, a population of 3,814,571 persons (see p. 69). Extension of commerce has accompanied the growth of population. Statistics of trade in past centuries are wanting; but at the present time London supplies half the total customs-revenue of the kingdom. One-fourth of the whole ship tonnage of England, and one-fourth of the entire exports, are centred in the port of London. (For fuller statistical information, see below, Section 20.) 20. Topography and Statistics. Topography. The city of London is built upon a tract of undulating clay soil, which extends irregularly along the valley of the Thames from a point near Reading to Harwich and Herne Bay at the mouth of the river, a distance of about 120 miles. It is divided into two portions by the river Thames, which, rising in the Cotswold Hills in Gloucestershire, is from its source down to its mouth in the German Ocean at Sheerness 230 M. in length, and is navigable for a distance of 50 M. - The southern and less important part of London (Southwark and Lambeth) lies in the counties of Surrey and Kent; the northern and principal portion in Middlesex and Essex. The latter part of the immense city may be divided, in accordance with its general characteristics, into two great halves (not taking into account the extensive outlying districts on the N. and the N.E., which are comparatively uninteresting to strangers): I. The City and the East End, consisting of that part of London which lies to the E. of the Temple, form the commercial and money-making quarter of the metropolis. It embraces the Port, the Docks, the Custom House, the Bank, the Exchange, the innumerable counting-houses of merchants, money-changers, brokers, and underwriters, the General Post Office, the printing and publishing offices of the Times, the legal corporations of the Inns of Court, and the Cathedral of St. Paul's, towering above them all. II. The West End, or that part of the town to the W. of the Temple, is the quarter of London which spends money, makes laws, and regulates the fashions. It contains the Palace of the Queen, the Mansions of the aristocracy, the Clubs, Museums, Picture Galleries, Theatres, Barracks, Government Offices, Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey; and it is the special locality for parks, squares, and gardens, for gorgeous equipages and powdered lackeys. Besides these great divisions, the following districts are distinguished by their population and leading occupations: I. On the LEFT BANK of the Thames: (a) To the E. of the City is the so-called Long Shore, which extends along the bank of the Thames, and is chiefly composed of quays, wharves, store-houses, and engine-factories, and inhabited by shipwrights, lightermen, sailors, and marine store dealers. (b) Whitechapel, with sugar-bakeries and their German workmen. (c) Houndsditch and the Minories, the quarters of the Jews. (d) Bethnal Green and Spitalfields to the N., and part of Shoreditch, form a manufacturing district, occupied to a large extent by silk-weavers, partly descended from the French Protestants (Huguenots) who took refuge in England after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. (e) Clerkenwell, between Islington and Hatton Garden, the district of watch-makers and metal-workers. (f) Paternoster Row, near St. Paul's Cathedral, the focus of the book-trade. (g) Chancery Lane and the Inns of Court, the headquarters of barristers, solicitors, and law-stationers. II. In Surrey, on the RIGHT BANK of the Thames: (a) Southwark and Lambeth, containing numerous potteries, glass-works, machine-factories, breweries, and hop-warehouses. (b) Bermondsey, famous for its tanneries, glue-factories, and wool-warehouses. (c) Rotherhithe, farther to the E., chiefly inhabited by sailors, ship-carpenters, coalheavers, and bargemen. By the Redistribution Bill of 1885 London is divided for parliamentary purposes into the City Proper, returning two members of parliament, and 27 metropolitan boroughs, comprising 59 single member districts. London University also returns one member. The City Proper, which strictly speaking forms a county of itself and is neither in Middlesex nor Essex, is bounded on the W. by the site of Temple Bar and Southampton Buildings; on the N. by Holborn, Smithfield, Barbican, and Finsbury Circus; on the E. by Bishopsgate Without, Petticoat Lane, Aldgate, and the Minories; and on the S. by the Thames. The City is divided into 26 Wards and 108 parishes, has a separate administration and jurisdiction of its own, and is presided over by the Lord Mayor. At the census of 1881 it consisted of 6493 inhabited houses with 50,526 inhabitants (24,371 less than in 1871). The resident population is steadily decreasing on account of the constant emigration to the West End and suburbs, the ground and buildings being so valuable for commercial purposes as to preclude their use merely as dwellings. More than 4000 houses are left empty every night under the guardianship of the 800 members of the City police force (p. 69). The day population of the City in 1881 was 261,061, and the number of houses or separate tenements in which persons were actively employed during the day was 25,143. The rateable value of property in 1887 was 3,767,000l. or about 300,0001. more than that of Liverpool. Sites for building in the City sometimes realise no less than 20-701. per square foot. The annual revenue of the City of London is about 500,000l. In 1881 an attempt was made to estimate the number of persons and vehicles entering the City precincts within 24 hours. Enumerators were stationed at 60 different inlets, and their returns showed the enormous totals of 797,563 foot-passengers and 71,893 vehicles. Westminster, to the W. of the City, bounded on the N. by Bayswater Road and Oxford Street, on the W. by Chelsea, Kensington, and Brompton, and on the S. by the Thames, comprises three of the parliamentary boroughs (Westminster Proper or the Abbey District, the Strand District, and the District of St. George's, Hanover Square), each returning one member to the House of Commons. It contains 25,312 houses and 228,932 inhabitants. The remaining parliamentary boroughs are Battersea, Bethnal Green, Camberwell, Chelsea, Clapham, Deptford, Finsbury, Fulham, Greenwich, Hackney, Hammersmith, Hampstead, Islington, Kensington, Lambeth, Lewisham, Marylebone, Newington, Paddington, St. Pancras, Shoreditch, Southwark (including Bermondsey and Rotherhithe), Tower Hamlets, Wandsworth, West Ham, and Woolwich. The population, area, and boundaries of these new boroughs are given in a map published by Philip, 32 Fleet Street (6d.) Statistics. The City, the West End, and the Borough, together with the suburban villages which have been gradually absorbed, form the great and constantly extending metropolis of London a city which, in the words of Tacitus (Ann. 14, 33), was and still is 'copiâ negotiatorum et commeatuum maxime celebre'. It has doubled in size within the last half-century, being now, from Stratford and Blackwall on the E. to Kew Bridge and Acton on the W., 14 M. in length, and from Clapham and Herne Hill on the S. to Hornsey and Highgate on the N., 8 M. in breadth, while it covers an area of 122 square miles. This area is, at a rough estimate, occupied by 7800 streets, which if laid end to end would form a line 3000M. long, lighted by a million gas-lamps consuming daily 28,000,000 |