The Growth of London

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 21, 1875

The Growth of London.

THE Leisure Hour in speaking of the growth of London says: "The metropolis of the British Empire, the largest city the world ever saw, covers, within fifteen miles radius of Charing Cross, nearly 700 square miles and numbers within these boundaries 4,000,000 inhabitants. It contains more Jews than the whole of Palestine, more Roman Catholics than Rome itself, more Irish than Dublin, more Scotchmen than Edinburgh. The port of London has every day on its waters 1,000 ships and 9,000 sailors. Upward of 120 persons are added to the population daily, or 40,000 yearly, a birth taking place every five minutes and a death every eight minutes. On an average, twenty-eight miles of streets are opened and 9,000 new houses built every year. In its postal districts there is a yearly delivery of 238,000,000 letters. On the police register there are the names of 120,000 habitual criminals, increasing by many thousands every year. More than one-third of all the crime of the country is committed in London, or at least brought to light there. There are as many beer-shops and gin-palaces as would, if their fronts were placed side by side, reach from Charing Cross to Portsmouth, a distance of seventy-three miles, and 38,000 drunkards are annually brought before its magistrates. The shops open on Sundays would form streets sixty miles long. It is estimated that there are above a million of people who are practically heathen, wholly neglecting the ordinances of religion. At least 900 additional churches and chapels would be required for the wants of the people."