3-046-974 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

A City church congregation, 1872. '...it would not be difficult to find places of worship...between St. Paul's and the Tower, where the lack of resident middle-class families leaves few persons likely to be regular attendants at Divine service. The cause of this apparent dereliction is obviously no indifference to the public exercises of religion...but simply the fact that mere warehouses and mercantile offices have taken the place of dwellings, since the date when so many of the old churches were built...The population of the City...is still rapidly decreasing, having fallen in ten years from 113,000 at the Census of 1861 to 75,000 at the last Census; while it contains 110 parishes or precincts, the inhabitants of which are most unequally distributed, some of those in the neighbourhood of Shoreditch being densely crowded, and others, near the resorts of trade, almost deserted after business hours. The only remedy is to be sought in the measure which has been partially adopted by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and the diocesan and local authorities, that of removing the useless old churches, and applying their endowments to provide additional places of worship, with active ministers, for the more populous quarters of London'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.