English Conurbations in the 1951 Census

CENSUS figures are usually limited to areas defined by local government boundaries. Professor C. B. Fawc tt m d two attempts to improve on these figures by adding together populations of groups of towns which, in his opinion, formed one urban region. His first paper on this subject, British conurbations in 1921, * was based on census of 1921; second, Distribution of urban in Great Britain, 1931, 2 was result of his analysis of census of 1931. The word was probably invented by Sir Patrick Geddes in his 'Cities in evolution, (1915); it has been much criticized but no other single word has been brought forward to convey adequately meaning of a continuously urban area. The term aggregation of population is far too clumsy.3 Previous censuses have given of Greater London, an area that is somewhat smaller than that of real conurbation. The census of 1951 is notable because it is first to record populations of five great pro? vincial conurbations, namely South-east Lancashire, West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Merseyside and Tyneside, as well as that of Greater London. The Preliminary Report of 1951 census for England and Wales speaks of long-felt need for statistics of provincial conurbations, but says that it was difficult not only to decide how many of these concentrations of should be chosen but also how they should be defined. It explains (p. xxii) that in 1950 the Interdepartmental Committee on Social and Economic Research (which includes academic as well as Departmental members and is serviced by General Register Office) took matter into consideration and prepared provisional suggestions for six major groupings in Great Britain outside London.* In result agreement was reached, under aegis of Com? mittee and Central Statistical Office, on conurbations to be used for presentation of official statistics generally. Each conurbation has been defined in terms of complete local government areas. For instance Greater London consists of City and 28 metropolitan boroughs of County of London; and of 66 county boroughs and county districts in Surrey, Kent, Middlesex, Hertfordshire and Essex. The list at end of this paper shows how each conurbation is composed in terms of local government areas. The conurbations have not been defined with exactly same boundaries as those selected by Professor Fawcett in 1931; it would be easy to argue merits and shortcomings of two schemes. Fawcett's

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