or national responsibility. There is also, it should be mentioned, a Deputy Steward, appointed by the High Steward, with the approbation of the Dean and Chapter; and a High Bailiff, appointed by the Dean and Chapter, who holds annual Courts Leet, in which constables are appointed, and has the return of writs, and usually a lease of the fines, forfeitures, and other emoluments of the franchise. There is likewise a coroner appointed by the Dean and Chapter.

The only separate jurisdiction in Westminster, however, which has any effective existence, is its express commission of the peace, the magistrates under which have their sessions-house opposite the Abbey, and their prison in Tothill Fields. Still the County Magistrates of Middlesex have a concurrent jurisdiction, and the ordinary metropolitan jurisdictions of police and justice, centreing at the Home Office and the Central Criminal Court, are the real local government for purposes of criminal justice.

The ancient parish of the City of Westminster is that of St. Margaret's, now called St. Margaret's and St. John's, from a new church consecrated in A.D. 1728. In the Liberty of Westminster, St. Martin-in-theFields is the mother-church of St. Paul Covent Garden (A.D. 1645), of St. Ann Soho (A.D. 1678), of St. James's (A.D. 1684,) and of St. George Hanover-square, (A.D. 1742); St. Mary-le-Strand and St. Clement Danes are ancient parishes connecting Westminster with the City of London. The close or precinct of the cathedral church of St. Peter, commonly called Westminster Abbey, is extra-parochial. The population of Westminster, including all these places, was about 130,000 at the commencement of the last century, and in 1841 amounted to 222,053. The parish of St. John, Westminster, with part of that of St. Margaret, forming the district of Tothill Fields, enclosed by Westminster Abbey, St. James's Park, Pimlico, the Vauxhall-road, and the Thames, and encircling the Millbank Penitentiary and the Westminster Bridewell, is chiefly inhabited by mechanics and the lower classes of labourers, the condition of whose habitations, in the worst part of St. John's parish, is very wretched. In the parishes of St. Clement Danes, St. Mary-le-Strand, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and St. Ann's Soho, there is, to the north of the Strand, another crowded mass of labouring population, intermingled, like the other, with inhabitants of disreputable character. But the rest of the City and Liberties of Westminster, bounded on the north by Oxford-street and the Uxbridge-road, and on the west by the parishes of Kensington and Chelsea, is occupied by the royal palaces and parks, the public offices, the clubs and houses of the nobility and gentry, and the smart habitations of the tradesmen in the streets of business, with here and there isolated retreats of crowded labourers, occupying even the narrowest space, for the sake of proximity to their employment, which is an imperative condition of their retaining it. The new region of Belgrave-square is perhaps the only portion which has not these localities; but it is contiguous to the lower population of Tothill Fields on the one side and Chelsea on the other. It has already been mentioned that Westminster and its liberties were included in the old Bills of Mortality.

The greatest extension of the Town, beyond the limits marked by these Bills, has been westward and northward, in the parishes of St. Pancras, St. Marylebone, Paddington, Kensington, and Chelsea, which completely encircle the City and Liberties of Westminster (the older town of resi

dence, to which they may be regarded as suburban,) on the north and west, and are all that Mr. Rickman, in the preface to the Census Abstracts of 1831, deems it necessary to add to the quarters already described, to comprise the whole population of the metropolis. At the beginning of the last century he calculates that they comprised only 9150 inhabitants; but in 1841 their united population was no less than 360,113. The two parishes at the extremes of these suburbs, viz., those of St. Pancras and Chelsea, contain much the largest proportion of the labouring classes; and in all of them there are particular localities which are very wretched; but the whole of Marylebone, with the western side of St. Pancras, forms the noble region bounded by Oxford-street and the Edgeware and Hampstead Roads, and comprising the Regent's Park and St. John's Wood; Paddington contains the splendid new quarter of Hyde Park Square, occupying the space between the Edgeware and Uxbridge Roads; and Kensington is a suburban district, almost wholly of substantial houses and dispersed villas.

Within these limits Mr. Rickman reckons the population of the whole metropolis, at the commencement of the last century, to have been about 674,000, while in 1841 it was no less than 1,713,100, without any allowance for seamen; being an increase of 254 per cent., while the population of England has increased from 5,475,000 to 15,911,646, or 291 per cent., which is 37 per cent. more than the increase of the metropolis. Feeling, however, that objections might be taken to the limits thus assigned, Mr. Rickman adds a total of the population of all the parishes whose churches are situated within eight miles of St. Paul's, which amounted in 1831 to 1,776,556, after adding four per cent. for sailors, soldiers, and unenumerated strangers; but it will presently appear possible to adopt limits at once less arbitrary and less extensive.

The bills or Tables of Mortality, now published weekly, quarterly, and annually by the Registrar General, have added, on the west, the parishes of Fulham and Hammersmith; on the north, that of St. Mary, Stoke Newington; and on the east, those of St. Leonard, Bromley, and St. Mary-le-Bow, all in the county of Middlesex; and on the south, that of Camberwell, in Surrey, and those of St. Nicholas and St. Paul Deptford, Greenwich, and Woolwich, in the county of Kent. The whole of these parishes are of the usual suburban character, with pleasing scattered houses, and some very wretched neighbourhoods, with the exception of those in the county of Kent, which have a distinctive character as the arsenal portion of the town. Unfortunately, Woolwich, in these last additions, is left entirely isolated from the rest of the metropolis by the intervening parish of Charlton. The Registrar-General's boundary is otherwise very imperfect; for while it makes this ill-accomplished extension on the east, it excludes, at the opposite end of the town, the whole of the important suburbs rising from Vauxhall Bridge to Clapham, and thence connected with Wandsworth and Battersea; while on the Middlesex side, though it extends an ample distance westward, it capriciously excludes Hampstead, at the same time that it includes the greater part of the more distant suburb of Highgate. The additional parishes added by this boundary contained, in 1841, a population of 163,067.

The obvious imperfection of all these boundaries compels us still to seek some other, and to inquire whether, to the present day, there really has been drawn no boundary of the metropolis for any political or admi

nistrative purpose whatever which would mark, by its aptitude for some definite purpose, the limits within which is comprised the whole of the population that can fairly be considered metropolitan in locality and in character. The outer boundary of the metropolitan boroughs at first suggests itself; but this excludes the western suburbs on the west and south-west, so as not to reduce too low the county constituencies of Middlesex and East Surrey; and that to such an extent as to preclude all possibility of its adoption. The next boundary which offers itself is the original limit adopted for the metropolitan police, by the 10th of George IV. c. 44, which, notwithstanding the addition of rural districts in every direction, still has a recognized existence under the 3rd and 4th of William IV. c. 19. There can be no doubt of the superior propriety of this boundary over every other which had yet been drawn, at the time of the first-mentioned statute; and had it been adopted by Mr. Rickman in 1831, would undoubtedly have directed the attention of the Registrar-General to a fitter limit than that which has heretofore been used for the new tables of mortality. Still it has two very considerable defects, for it extends so far westward as to include Ealing and Brentford; while on the south-east, by stopping short with the parish of Greenwich, it excludes Woolwich, and the rest of the parliamentary borough of Greenwich, as well as the suburban villages of Lee and Lewisham.

The faults in this boundary have, however, been expressly corrected by the one which it is now proposed to adopt, for statistical purposes, as that which administrative experience proves to be the circuit of the population socially connected with and organized upon London, to the exclusion of such as is suburban to the first towns in the surrounding counties, and dependent upon their petty sessions for the minor aids of criminal justice. This is the outer boundary of the Metropolitan Police Court Districts, as fixed by an Order in Council of November 10, 1840, amended by one of February 5, 1841, and extended by another of Dec. 16, 1842, all issued under the statutes of the 2nd and 3rd of Victoria, c. 71, and the 3rd and 4th of Victoria, c. 84. This boundary makes the limit of the metropolis, south of the Thames to be coincident with that of the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court from Plumstead Marshes, below Woolwich, southward and westward by Eltham, Sydenham, Norwood, Streatham, Tooting, and Wimbledon; but here approaching the vicinities of Kingston and Richmond, it turns straight northward between Barnes and Mortlake, and, crossing the Thames, includes Chiswick and Acton, but excludes Brentford and Ealing, which are included in the original metropolitan police boundary, with the rest of the Middlesex course of which latter boundary, the one adopted for the police courts is identical; running eastward to Kilburn Wells, including Hampstead, and thence running along the Highgate Hills to Hornsey Wood, Stamford Hill, and the Lea, above Lea Bridge, whence it follows the course of that river to the Thames, and the channel of the latter to Plumstead, where its commencement on the south side of the river has already been noticed. The extreme length of the district thus encircled, from east to west, is about 16 miles; its extreme breadth, from north to south, about 10, and its contents about 130 square miles; which would form a tract of somewhat more than 11 miles square.

The parishes and places comprised in it, which are not contained in

any of the boundaries already described, are of a well known suburban character, and full of the habitations of persons who have daily avocations in the metropolis, in continuous rows, or in detached villas. They are, the parishes of Hampstead, Acton, and Chiswick, in Middlesex; the Wandsworth and Clapham Union, comprising the parishes of Battersea, Clapham, Putney, Streatham, Tooting, and Wandsworth, with the further outlying parishes of Barnes, Wimbledon, and Merton, and the hamlet of Penge, in Surrey; and the Lewisham Union, comprising the parishes of Charlton, Eltham, Lee, Lewisham, and Plumstead, the liberty of Kidbrooke, and the hamlet of Mottingham, in Kent; the total population of which places, in 1841, was 87,713; an amount within the space which, were there no other evidence, would be decisive as to the propriety of their being regarded as suburban to the metropolis, independent of that which is afforded by the rate of increase.

The boundary which it is here proposed to adopt is at once the most regular which has yet been offered, the most consistent with ancient divisions, and the most nearly coincident with the limits to which the sewerage, the supplies of water and gas, the labours of the Metropolitan Road Commissioners, and other public works extend.

Progress of Population in the severul Portions of the Metropolis.

The remainder of this paper will appear in the next number of the Journal.-Ed.

:

1,666,384

17

1,961,810

PROCEEDINGS OF THE STATISTICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON.

Second Ordinary Meeting, December 18, 1843.

ROWLAND HILL, Esq., in the Chair.

The following gentlemen were elected :—

A. W. Barnes, Esq.

Rev. H. Davies.

W. G. Lumley, Esq.
W. A. Graham, Esq.
Thomas Wicksteed, Esq.
James Hodgkin, Esq.
W. Barker, Esq.

Samuel K. Wilson, Esq.

The following gentlemen were proposed as candidates for admission into the Society:

The Hon. E. P. Bouverie.

Henry Hobhouse, Esq.

A paper by Edwin Chadwick, Esq. "On the Proper Modes of Measuring by Statistical Returns the Duration of Life, and the Pressure and Progress of the Causes of Mortality amongst different Classes of the Community and amongst the Population of different Countries," was read. (See p. 1.)

Third Ordinary Meeting, January 15, 1844.
THOMAS TOOKE, Esq., V. P., in the Chair.
The following gentlemen were elected :—

The Hon. E. P. Bouverie.

Henry Hobhouse, Esq.

John Dunlop, Esq. and Richard Clewin Griffith, Esq. were appointed the auditors of the Society's accounts for 1843, in conjunction with Dr. Bowring, M.P., on behalf of the Council.

A paper by G. F. P. Neison, Esq. "On a Method recently proposed for conducting Inquiries into the Comparative Sanatory Condition of various Districts, with Illustrations derived from numerous places in Great Britain at the Period of the last Census," was read. (See p. 40.)

Fourth Ordinary Meeting, February 19, 1844.

The Right Hon. VISCOUNT ASHLEY, M.P., President, in the Chair. The following gentlemen were formally admitted Fellows of the Society :

A. W. Barnes, Esq.

Hon. E. P. Bouverie.

Charles Hindley, Esq. M.P.

The following gentlemen were proposed as candidates for admission into the Society :

T. Milner Gibson, Esq., M.P.
John Meeson Parsons, Esq.

Thomas Trevethan Spicer, Esq.
Charles Creag, Esq.

The following letter from Mr. Hallam was read :

DEAR SIR,

24, Wilton Crescent, February 16, 1844. I AM Very desirous to contribute, as far as in my power, to the promotion of those valuable inquiries into the condition of the poor in metropolitan districts which have been commenced by the Statistical Society, and of which we had a sample last year as to a part of the parish of St. George's, as well as, at an earlier time, as to other districts. I enclose, therefore, a cheque for 257., which, as I have been informed, will enable the Society to lay before the world the result of a similar investigation into some other portion of the metropolis. The inquiry last year appeared to me so well conducted that, if no objection exists, I should conceive, that the same person might be employed, and it is a matter of some importance, with a view to comparison, that statements necessarily rather too indefinite, such as those as to the condition of the poor must be, should proceed from the same person, and consequently be referred to the same standard.

I would leave wholly to the Society the choice of a parish or district to be thus investigated. The neighbourhood of Fleet-street, Chancery-lane, and Holborn has