LONELY LITTLE LONDON.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 144146, 16 July 1913, Page 6

LONELY LITTLE LONDON.

Of all cities, the City of London is probably the most lonely. Such is the contention of a writer in “Sunday at Home,” who devotes an article to showing who its inhabitants are and how they live. Ho reminds his readers, in the first place, that the City of London is really a small city, as cities go. Compared with the vast domain of the London County Council —an area of 74,816 acres—the City itself is in area a negligible quantity. It is usually thought that no one lives in the City now except tho Lord Mayor and a few caretakers, yet /the hist census has shown that in this square milo or so of laud there are as many as 19,657 residents. Save for Woolwich, with its army of arsenal workers, tho City is the only part of London in which tho number of mon is greater than tho, number of women. Twice as many deaths as marriages take place there, and three times as many-people dio as are horn. In Dr. Johnson’s day 100,000 peojilo lived in the City, and seventy years ago the number was still greater. Then the demolition of tho old insanitary buildings, and of tho last remaining mercantile residences, brought tho number down thirty years ago to 50,000, and twenty years ago to 40,000. Ton years ago it was 26,000, and to-day it is less than 20,000. Ono wonders who the thousands can bo who continue to li'vo there, and why they still choose tho crowded heart of tho metropolis for thoir dwellings. Tho aldermen do not live there-—tho writer mentions the fact with regret—nor does tho Town Clerk, nor tho Recorder, nor tho City Remembrancer, nor tho Common Sergeant, nor any other of tho City functionaries except tho Lord Mayor. But out beyond Leadenliall Street, where the City merges into East End, there is a fringe of shop-keeping population, mostly Jewish, and some industrial dwellings. There are the inhabitants of tho five hundred liconscl premises within tho City limits, and _ others, again, in some back courts which have not yet boon demolished. There are tho soldiers in tho barracks at tho Tower, tho inmates of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital—temporarily City residents —and a few other miscellaneous groups of dwellers, and, finally, the resident warehousemen, tho housekeepers in tho largo shops and offices on the main thoroughfares, and tho caretakers and their families, who form the bulk of tho population. The isolation of those thousands of people, living though they do within tho compass of a square milo or so, is almost complete. They seem to know no one and to bo known by no ono. “I have asked a dozen City men,” says tho writer, “whether they knew anyone who actually lived in J;he City, and they have all replied that they knew not a soul. And when, by good chance, I tracked to his lair a man who did live in the City, ho told me that, tho neighbours ho know could bo counted on tho fingers of one hand.” London, he adds, though far from being, as Shelloy prophesied, a habitation of bitterns, probably contains a larger number of lonely souls per aero than anywhoro else in Christendom.