Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

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London (with all its suburbs) covers within the fifteen miles radius of Charing-cross nearly seven hundred square miles.

It numbers within its boundaries four million inhabitants.

It contains more country-bred persons than the counties of Devon and Gloucester combined, or 37 per cent. of its entire population.

Every four minutes a birth takes place in the metropolis and every six minutes a death.

Within the circle named there are added to the population two hundred and five persons every day and seventy-five thousand annually.

London has seven thousand miles of streets, and on an average twenty-eight miles of new streets are opened and nine thousand new houses built every year. One thousand vessels and nine thousand sailors are in port every day.

Its crime, unfortunately, is also in proportion to its extent.

Seventy-three thousand persons are annually taken into custody by the police, and more than one-third of all the crime in the country is committed within its borders.

Thirty-eight thousand persons are annually committed for drunkenness by its magistrates.