The children of the city : what can we do for them? / by James B. Russell.

  • Russell, James Burn, 1837-1904.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The children of the city : what can we do for them? / by James B. Russell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    Sucli were the clangers and disadvantages of large cities as iliey appeared to the rulers of those distant centuries. Some of ihem, and notably those of government and food supply, have in ihe interval been fairly met or even overcome by improved local I dministration and the repeal of the corn-laws. The standard of i iealth of cities has also been enormously advanced, but it is still mie tiiat the rural districts are being depopulated to maintain Hie towns, that the inhabitants of towns are, in the words of JJueen Elizabeth, heaped up together, and in a sort smothered rvith many children in small tenements, and that towns are, though much improved, unwholesome as compared with the iural districts from which their active, reproductive population is ii rafted. Let me now try to jDut before j'ou as concisely and simply as noay be some information as to the growth of towns in Great Britain, as to the manner of this growth and the vital charac- eeristics of a town as compared with a country population. In Idoing so I shall state nothing which is not capable of proof by iL.ctual statistics, but remembering how diificult it is to make ijgures ]iopular, I shall use them as sparingly as possible. In this country, Government, to use a commercial phrase, takes itock every ten years. In England the whole country is divided mto Sanitary Districts, which are classified as Urban or Rural iLCCording as, from the density of the inhabitants, they require more or less stringent sanitary provisions. In 1861 it was found lhat 63 per cent, of the entire population of England lived under .Trban conditions, in 1871 this proportion had risen to 66 per «ent., and in 1881 to 68 per cent. In other words in 1861 there were 172 dwellers in towns to 100 dwellers in rural districts; mut in 1871 the number had risen to 192, and in 1881 had reached .! 12. The growth of London has been so extraordinary, we may iay portentous, that it deseiwes a special reference. In 1801 it *vas found that out of every 100 of the entire popuLition of England eleven were inhabitants of London, and this proportion las advanced steadily with every census until in 1881 it had leached fifteen. In Scotland we have no such siib-division of the country into liistricts on the basis of their sanitary requirements; bvit the Registrar-General classifies the population according as they live