SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY The return of 1886 shows that compared with the coal-hewers, engine- wrights, fitters, and boiler-makers earn a considerably greater weekly sum. In North Staffordshire the average weekly wage was estimated at zSs. qd., whilst in the south it was given as varying from 2 p. yd. to 5u. 8</., but as comparatively few men received the higher pay, the average wage would probably work out at much the same rate as in the north. 83 * An analysis of the census returns in the period between 1801 and igoi 836 shows an enormous aggregate increase in the population of Staffordshire, which in the latter year stood fourth on the list of English counties. The greatest increase has of course been in the great industrial regions of North and South Staffordshire, the Potteries and the Black Country, and in the neighbourhood of the small Cheadle coalfield in the north. But even in the agricultural districts there has been a rise in population in a considerable number of cases in the first half of the nineteenth century, . though this has often failed to maintain itself. Bromley Regis is a case in point ; it had a population of 454 in 1801 which increased in the next forty years to 718, but has now fallen to 500. The township of Salt and Enson, in the hundred of Pirehill, shows exactly the same number of inhabitants in 1901 as it did a hundred years ago, viz. 370, but in the year 1841 its numbers had reached 580. These are only two instances out of a good many similar ones which might be cited. The growth of population both in the industrial and agricultural districts is due directly or indirectly to the industrial development of the county, and to the growth of railways during the last century. Of the four most densely populated towns in the county three are in South Staffordshire, and one only, the smallest, in the north. During the century Wolverhampton, the most populous, has increased from 12,565 to 94,187 ; Walsall, the centre of the leather, saddlery, and harness trade, has risen from 10,399 in 1801 to 87,464 in 1901. The largest part of this rise in population is due to the growth of Walsall Foreign as it is called, as the township proper has only risen from 5,177 to 5,729 in the hundred years, though in 1851 it contained more inhabitants, viz. 8,761. West Bromwich contained, in 1801, 5,687 persons, compared with 65,114 in 1901. The population of Hanley county borough in 1901 was 61,599. I ts g row th cannot be tabulated so clearly as the other towns, as the town of Hanley is part of the ancient parish of Stoke upon Trent, and was not separately rated to the relief of the poor until 1894, and its population is not separately shown in the table given below. The sum of the populations of the two townships of Hanley and
- Shelton in 181 1, however, is estimated at about 9,968, but this is admittedly
only approximately correct. During the nineteenth century many industrial villages have become towns, e.g. Burslem, which has risen rom 6,578 to 40,234, and Darlaston, which had a population of only 3,812 in 1801, and at the last census contained 15,386 inhabitants. The parish of Sedgeley is still made up of a number of scattered villages, but its numbers have gone "' Return of Rates of Wages in Mines and Quarries, 1891, p. 19. The weekly wages of a ' puddler ' are jjiven as 30^. in 1893. See Ref>. of Lab. Com. 1893-4., xxxii (c 6894. x), 18. 195 See Table of Pop. appended to this article. 315
