unusually large proportion is made up of
poor Irish. Eight and a half in a hundred of
the inhabitants of London are natives of
Ireland. In Saint Pancras the proportion is
two in a hundred less; in the Strand and
Marylebone one in a hundred more. But, in
Holborn, the proportion is seventeen in a
hundred, and in Saint Giles's three in a
hundred more than even that. It is noticeable
also that of the Irish in Saint Giles's and
Holborn the proportion, under twenty years
of age, is one-third, instead of as elsewhere one-
fourth or one-fifth of the whole. This shows that
the Irish immigration into these districts is
young, vigorous, and steadily increasing.
Unfortunately the number of Irish in an English
town district is a pretty sure test of its
wretchedness. In this respect Saint Giles's
stands foremost among the localities of
London.

The principal test of health in any place,
which we shall presently apply to Saint Giles's,
is the proportion of disease and death among
the children in it. At the last census it
appeared that there were—in the proportion
of about five to six—fewer children to set
against the adults in Saint Giles's than in the
town at large. Therefore, for health, in any
such comparison, to be proved equal, it should
be shown that the proportion of disease and
death among children is in Saint Giles's by
one sixth less than the average of London.
There is no increase of population now. In
ten years, at the beginning of the century,
Saint Giles's grew as Saint Pancras is at this
day growing, and it then added twelve
thousand to the number of its people. In
the twenty years preceding eighteen
hundred and forty-one, the increase was but
of two thousand five hundred. In the
next ten years there were improvements
made. By the pulling down of
lanes and courts to form new streets, two
hundred and fifty-nine houses were blotted
out. We have urged very often what
must be the result of these London improvements,
when the roofs of a hundred wretched
people are pulled down to make room for
perhaps ten who are more prosperous. New
and clean homes must be provided with the
right hand, while with the left hand old and
dirty dens are tumbled down; or else the
consequence must be, as it has been in Saint
Giles's, where, although two hundred and
fifty-nine houses, which had contained nearly
three thousand people, were got rid of, the
people were not got rid of; there was a
decrease only of seventy-eight in the population.
More than two thousand seven hundred
wretched creatures pressed themselves,
therefore, on the already over-crowded
inmates of the dens that were left standing.

There is a curious fact about Saint Giles's,
seeming to contradict the established maxim,
that where deaths of children are most
numerous, there is compensation in an
increase of the frequency of births. Births in
the district of Saint Giles are somewhat
below the average, and yet the number of
the marriages exceeds the usual proportion.

The excess of births over deaths would
add four hundred persons yearly to the
population of the district; but, since closer
packing is impossible, some must go out to
make room for new comers. There must be a
migration out of Saint Giles's to the extent of
about four hundred persons yearly. Of this
number almost a fourth goes out to die in the
surrounding hospitals, or to wander abroad
after discharge from their sick wards. The
Workhouse Infirmary admits yearly a thousand
cases of disease, and gives out-door
relief to six or seven times that number. The
death rate, from the nature ot the cases, is
twice that of an ordinary hospital.

There are no trades in the district that
affect in a remarkable degree the health of
its inhabitants; there is nothing worse than
the fifteen not ill-managed slaughterhouses,
and the noisome cowsheds.

In Saint Giles's there are sixty-nine common
lodging-houses, all in the parish of Saint
Giles in the Fields, none in Bloomsbury. The
improvement made in these by the working
of the Common Lodging Houses Act has been
immense; but their inmates are the very
poorest, often the most depraved of the poor,
and after every conceivable correction has
been made for chance of error, it is found to
be a fact, that in Saint Giles's the mortality in
them is greater than in other houses of the
same streets. They do not, however, bring
disease and death into the parish. More of
that goes out than comes in; for there is no
local hospital, and the sick population of
Saint Giles's looks for relief to the hospitals
in adjoining parishes. The greater number
of them, it is found, go to King's College
Hospital, many go to the Middlesex and
Charing Cross Hospitals, some to University
College Hospital, and a few of the little ones
are sent to the Hospital for Sick Children in
Great Ormond Street.

Because of the name it has for misery,
Saint Giles's has been much favoured by the
Society for Improving the Condition of the
Labouring Classes. One-fourth of all that
has been done in London, by societies and by
the benevolence of private persons, for
improving the dwellings of the poor, has been
done in Saint Giles's, where there are
furnished improved homes for, altogether, two
hundred and forty families, and for two
hundred and eleven single men. There is much
yet to be done by these institutions, "whose
larger acceptance," says the Health Officer,
"would save the lives of hundreds, and
improve the morals of thousands." Saint
Giles's has the Model Houses for Families, in
Streatham Street, at rentals of from half-a-
crown to six shillings a-week, containing
about three hundred and thirty people, of
whom two hundred are children. Here there
is a long list of applicants for vacancies.