London population history
Last week we saw how East Enders of preceding centuries were beset by illness. Cholera and typhoid and the rest were the diseases of the overcrowded city, and they had a dramatic impact on life expectancy. The census of 1851 recorded half of Britain’s population as living in towns (the first time ever, anywhere on the planet). Death from sickness was now at a level not seen since the Black Death in the 14th century, and things had been getting steadily worse. A child born in London in 1820 could expect to live to 35. by the 1830s, life expectancy had fallen to 29. To give a comparison: a man born in 1960 could expect to live to around 68. If he’s still around today, he can expect to get past 80.
The pattern, since the late 17th century, meant that although London was becoming biggest and most populous city on the planet (overtaking Paris), it also had a population shortage. After steady growth during the 1600s, numbers had topped half a million by 1700, and reached a million by 1800. Numbers doubled again by the time of that 1851 census. London would look strange to us now, with few old people (though a less healthy populace would undoubtedly appear older) and with relatively few children. Infant mortality was over 50 per cent, and in any case people weren’t having many children.
In the late 1600s, people were marrying late for one thing - Londoners struggling to survive financially were perhaps less likely to want the additional financial burden of children, or perhaps even to survive long enough to bear them. Illegitimacy was a stigma, so there were relatively few children born outside wedlock. The London population was barely even replacing its numbers.
As ever with London, this huge growth was largely fuelled by immigration, mostly from a good distance. Certain districts of London were predominantly Scottish, Irish or Yorkshire. And Spitalfields was fast filling with Huguenots fleeing religious persecution in mainland Europe. As fertility and reproduction declined, so the numbers rose - there was lots of work but not enough new Londoners to do it. As the 1700s wore on, so immigration increased from around the capital. The rise of extensive farming (fewer people needed to farm larger estates) meant many were forced from the land of the home counties, and fetched up in the ever-growing conurbation east of Aldgate. By one estimate, around a sixth of England’s population had lived in London at one time.
By the early 1700s there were Sephardic Jews and Ashkenazim from Poland and Germany settled in Whitechapel and Petticoat Lane, while the Irish were creating ‘Little Dublin’ in St Giles in the Fields. The end of the Seven Years War in 1763 and the American War in 1781 saw black immigrants from Africa, America and the Caribbean settle in numbers in London. By 1800 there were probably between 5000 and 10,000 black people in London.
And social patterns changed. From the 1730s onwards, the marriage age began to fall (to below 25) and illegitimacy increased too. Of course infant mortality accounted still for around half of all births. And still, the London population couldn’t replenish itself ‘organically’ - still immigrants poured in. By 1841, less than two thirds of Londoners had actually been born here. French, Poles, Indians, Italians, Chinese, Jews and Blacks were all common sights on London streets. London grew rich on trade (for the lucky few at least). For the rest, pouring in from Essex and beyond, there were always jobs in service, on the docks or in the burgeoning ‘manufactories’.
And by the 19th century there had been another interesting turn. Infant mortality was dropping. There were more children about just as life expectancy was plummeting to below 30. The result, was more orphans, and more of street children seeking any way to survive that they could. In rising panic, the toffs of the West End identified the young urchins, pickpockets and cutpurses who made traversing the streets of the City such a risk. The records of the Central Criminal Court of the time identify two thirds of defendants in trials as being between 14 and 30. Not too much of a leap from here perhaps to the ‘thieves’ kitchens’ that journalist Charles Dickens observed on his journeys through the East End of London - the characters redrawn as The Artful Dodger, Bill Sikes and the rest.