100 



REPORT — 1853. 



hazard, were analysed into their constituent parts, and they gave some curious re« 

 suits. About 5 per cent, only of the families in Great Britain consisted of husband, 

 wife, children, and servants, generally considered the requisites of domestic felicity; 

 while 893 families had each ten children at home, 317 had each eleven, and 64 had 

 each twelve. The number of each class of institution, and the number of persons 

 inhabiting them, are annexed : — 



Of these 295,856 persons, 260,340 were inmates, and 35,516 officers and servants. 

 The excess of males in the prisons arose from the fact that crime was four times as 

 prevalent among males as among females. The number of the houseless classes, 

 t. e. of persons sleeping in barns, tents, and the open air, on the night of the census, 

 was 18,249. The following table gives the number of these classes, together with 

 those sleeping in barges and vessels : — 



It was mentioned as a curious trait of gipsy feeling, that a whole tribe struck their 

 tents, and passed into another parish, in order to escape enumeration. The com- 

 position of a town was next described; also the laws operating upon the location of 

 families. The number of cities and towns, of various magnitudes, in Great Britain 

 was 815 : — viz. 580 in England and Wales, 225 in Scotland, and 10 in the Channel 

 Islands. The town and country population was equally balanced, — 104 millions 

 against lOJ millions. The density in the towns was 3,337 persons to the square 

 mile; in the country, only 120. The average population of each town in England 

 and Wales was 15,500 ; of each town in Scotland, 6,654. The average ground area 

 of the English town was 4f miles. The manner in which the ground area in Great 

 Britain was occupied by the population was illustrated by a series of squares. The 

 adventitious character of certain towns was alluded to ; many had risen rapidly from 

 villages to cities, and had almost acquired a metropolitan character. In 1851, Great 

 Britain contained 70 towns of 20,000 inhabitants and upwards. There was an in- 

 creasing tendency of the people to concentrate themselves in masses. London 

 extended over an area of 78,029 acres, or 122 square miles, and the number of its 

 inhabitants, rapidly increasing, was 2,362,236 on the day of the last census. The 

 author illustrated this number by a curious calculation : — a conception of this vast 

 mass of people might be formed by the fact, that if the metropolis was surrounded 

 by a wall, having a north gate, a south gate, an east gate, and a west gate, and each 

 of the four gates was of sufficient width to allow a column of persons to pass out 

 freely /our abreast, and a peremptory necessity required the immediate evacuation of 

 the city, it could not be accomplished under four-and-twenty hoars, by the expiration 

 of which time the head of each of the four columns would have advanced a no less 

 distance than seventy-Jive miles from their respective gates, all the people being in 

 close file, four deep. In respect to the density or proximity of the population, a 



