Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 July 1901 — INCREASE OF LONDON HOTELS. [ARTICLE]

INCREASE OF LONDON HOTELS.

Present Caravansary Accommodations of the W«.rlu’* capital. With a population of 5,500,000 London harbors every day 120,000 strangers. Some may remain a week, some a month, but all the year around there Is an average of 130,000 visitors who are within the metropolitan boundaries. No city in the world can exhibit such a proportion—a second’s consideration will show that It is stupendous. The first thing arising Is, Where lathis army harbored? Roughly It may be said to be spread out all over London, but when particular inquiry comes to be made It Is found that only 70 per cent of the gross total actually Spend the night In the metropolis, while less than 17,000 put np at recognized hotels. In other words, 17,000 persons engaged hotel rooms yesterday in London, while over 3S,(XX) stopped In private houses or with friends. These figures hnve not been achieved hurriedly or without much inquiry and difficulty, owing to the lack of feiMy facilities established by law. In Paris every guest of a hotel or lodging-house is/obliged on his or her arrival to fill up a form issued by the police, tvherefrom the precise number of dally visitors to the city can be ascertained almost to a unit. It Is different in London. Fifteen years ago the Cecil, the Savoy, the Metropole, the Victoria, the Grand, and the First Avenue hotels had not been built. The dally hotel arrivals fifteen years ago did not average 1.300. A liotcl with fifty bedrooms was a monster caravansary, and the richest and most aristocratic foreigners were compelled to put up with apartments, or else the dirt and inconvenience of the little hostelries which were thickly dotted throughout Albemarle street. Dover street, and the Hanover square quarter—lncluding that marvelous Institution known as Claridge's. Nowadays we have the Cecil, with 000 rooms; the Metropole, with 250; the Grand, with 200, and the Savoy, with 300; to say nothing of the vast hive of hotels in Kensington and Bayswater. The recognized hotels of London have no fewer than 18,500 bedrooms, with accommodation for 25.000 guests, or 30,000 at a pinch. Of private hotels and boardinghouses of the first (“lass there are 2,200, with accommodation for 38,000 visitors. Altogether 280,000 visitors can be accommodated in London at hotels and boarding-houses alone. If we add apartments the total would reach three-quarters of a million. No more forcible illustration of the growth of hospitable London in recent years can be cited than by the simple statement that in 18S1 the hotel accommodation called by courtesy firstclass. could provide quarters for only 4,000 persons. Perhaps not the least interesting circumstance in connection with the Lori accommodation of the world's nie- • tropolis is Its practical confinement within a limited sphere. If we draw a half-mile circle about the Nelson statue, we are inclosing a vast population which 'is shifting its habitat incessantly. Tradesmen nowadays do not live over the shop, so that if we subtract the tradesmen we find that the parish of Savoy is almost entirely 1 couijKised of waiters, cooks, and chambermaids. Judged residentially, it is , the most marvelous under the sun. for It shifts its imputation every week. Its 10,000 inhabitants of last week are to-day scattered over Europe: and its residents of last month are to-day in Russia, in Montana, in India, and in Japan.—London Mail.