London in the nineteenth century / by Sir Walter Besant.

  • Walter Besant
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: London in the nineteenth century / by Sir Walter Besant. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    48/490 page 26
    As for the new streets, one may mention Queen Victoria Street, Cannon Street, King William Street, New Oxford Street, Regent Street, the opening of Piccadilly Circus, the new streets between St. Martin’s and Piccadilly Circus, and Oxford Street. The new buildings cannot possibly be enumerated : one has only to walk along any of the principal avenues in order to notice how many tall and stately offices of architectural pretensions have taken the place of the small shops which formerly stood there. There have been losses. Of the older and historic houses. Craven House, Bedford House, Peterborough House, Burlington House, and others have been taken down. Fire destroyed what was left of the old Palace of Westminster. Fire destroyed the Royal Exchange, Drury Lane Theatre and Covent Garden Theatre. A great number of new churches have been built; many City churches have been taken down ; many new bridges have been thrown across the river; a large number of statues have been set up in various parts of the town. Numerous charitable institutions and societies have been founded during this period, also new institutions of art and science, and many associations for special objects. One railway has been opened after another. Many schemes of social improvement have been proposed or attempted : all these things will be more fully described in their own place. The century has abolished lotteries, public executions, flogging, and imprison- ments for debt : it has given baths, public wash-houses, free libraries and free schools, and model lodging-houses to the people ; it has also given the penny and halfpenny papers; it has extended the franchise ; it has given the people the right to hold public meetings, to speak as they please, and to form trades-unions. It has taken from the people the places where there was formerly every night dancing in public ; it has closed the public gardens ; but it has left the music-halls and the exhibitions, where there are greater facilities or temptation than in an open dancing- room. It has witnessed a great decrease in drinking, and has opened up for the people a larger and fuller life than they could enjoy before, offering them good music, good pictures, easy access to the country, many holidays, and a greatly increased number of theatres. The population of London, including all that vast area now covered by the authority of the London County Council, was returned in i8oi as 864,035. Twenty years later it was 1,227,590. In 1841 it had risen to 1,872,365. In 1851 we find it 2,362,236 ; in 1861,2,803,989; in 1871, 3,254,260 ; in 1881, 3,814,571 ; in 1891, 4,231,431. The rate of increase during the last fifty years has averaged nearly 500,000 in the ten years. One would have expected the rate to increase with the population, but this has not been the case. For instance, the increase from 1841 to 1851 was 489,861; that from 1881 to 1891 was 416,860. The reasons for this decreasing rate must be sought in the history of trade, of emigration, and other causes.
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