[Report 1921] / Medical Officer of Health, Brighton County Borough.

  • Brighton (England). County Borough Council.
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1921] / Medical Officer of Health, Brighton County Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    5/90 (page 5)
    THE 1921 CENSUS. The night of Sunday, the 24th April, 1921, was fixed for the taking j of the census, but the coal strike and other threatened strikes made post- il ponement advisable. The actual date of the census was June 19th. At [. that time the coal strike had not ended and many large works were conse- *• quently closed down, also there was a spell of fine weather. Many people J in the great industrial areas were on holiday and the holiday resorts near I by had abnormal populations. The intercensal increase expressed as a ■ percentage was, in the case of Llandudno 84, Blackpool 64, Southend-on- ■ Sea 50, Scarborough 25, Eastbourne 20, Worthing 17, Hove 10 and .Hastings ■ 9. These figures compare with an increase for the County Boroughs ir generally of 6 per cent. The figures for Brighton are 131,237 for 1911 I and 142,427 for 1921, an increase of 9 per cent. Sit is generally agreed that the census figure for the holiday resorts includes visitors, and that for the purposes of obtaining a correct death- rate the resident population only should be included. It was- therefore I reasonable for the Registrar-General to reduce for statistical purposes the populations of the holiday resorts. At the same time great care should L have been taken not to underestimate these populations as a relatively i. low or high death-rate is by many people taken as an index of the healthiness 1 or otherwise of the holiday resort in question. The Registrar-General, on the grounds set out below, estimated I' Brighton’s resident population at 134,800, or 7,627 below the 1921 census j figure, and onl}- 3,563 over the 1911 census figure. An extract from his » letter of explanation is as follows :— “ Of the 142,427 persons enumerated in Brighton, more than 11,000 were actually returned as visitors, and it is known from the statements of ‘ Workplace ’ given on the Census Schedules that many others, not so described, were in fact non-residents in the Borough. The resident population has accordingly been •assessed at 134,800, in which is included some allowance for residents who may have been enumerated elsewhere on the night of the Census.” “ No attempt was made at the 1911 Census—taken at a week-end in April, to separate visitors from residents with the result that intercensal comparisons may be misleading, unless allow- ance is made for the non-resident population included on that occasion.” My own estimate of Brighton’s resident population is 138,000. This figure is arrived at in this way : the census in 1911 was taken on the '3rd April. At that date there was no public holiday, Good Friday being on April 14th, so that the number of visitors was at a minimum. Taking the population as 130,000, and adding 6 per cent., which is the average ■ percentage increase in the populations of County Boroughs in the last 1 fiecennium, a figure of 137,800 is arrived at. Knowing the increase in the numbers employed at various works and the relative increase in the average number per house, and the practical absence of empty houses i now, compared with 1,659 empty houses in 1911, I consider 138,000 as a very conservative estimate.