NATURAL HISTORY. 
23 
tlie year 1800, during which time the population 
of the city has increased in a very extraordinary ratio, 
the amount of rates for the poor has not at all 
increased in the same proportion. During the latter 
years of the late war they increased very considerahly, 
and in the year 1817, when the glove trade was much 
depressed, they amounted to the enormous sum of 
£9,068 ; but of late years the expense of the poor 
has not much exceeded £4,000 per annum. The 
charge for 1827 was £4,261. The charge for 1833 
was £5,544.^ 
I shall now take a rapid view of the population of 
Worcester, shewing its gradual increase, from the 
earliest records still extant. 
The population of Worcester, previous to the year 
1800, is very inadequately reported. We possess the 
aggregate number of inhabitants, for two or three 
distant periods, yet on this number we cannot depend 
with any certainty; for if we apply to the parish 
registers, wishing to discover the ratio of increase 
or decrease, such is their incorrectness and incom- 
pleteness, that all reasoning deduced from them must 
be inconclusive. 
The whole population of Worcester is stated by 
Bishop Sandys, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 
in 1563, to have amounted to about 10,025. In 
1646, when Worcester was besieged by the forces 
^ In 1803 the County paid £87,000 poors' rate, at 5|d.. in the pound ; in 1806, 
£1,309,122 property tax ; the income of its real property according to the property 
tax act of 1815 was £799,605, and the sum raised for the maintenance of the poor 
in 1815 was £117,502, at the rate of 2s. lljd. in the pound. 
