Counting Britain’s beauties and leech-bleeders
A tour of the country’s statistical past and a debate over its future
By the start of the 20th century statisticians had mapped where some of the drunkest people in Britain were (Swansea, take a bow) as well as the most criminal (ditto). They had chronicled the sanitary state of London’s West End (filthy) and its reading habits (also, at times, filthy). They knew more about Ramsbottom than anyone could wish to. But they didn’t know where the hottest women in Britain lived.
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This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “This sectored isle”
Britain January 13th 2024
- The housing ladder, 1950-2005
- A typically British way to smooth handovers of power
- Britain’s worst miscarriage of justice sparks outrage at last
- Britain’s health-care system looks rather as it did in the 1930s
- Wales wants to be more like Scandinavia
- Counting Britain’s beauties and leech-bleeders
- Keir Starmer, Reform UK and Britain’s populist paradox
From the January 13th 2024 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
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