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The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Auckland Provincial District]

Population

Population.

The population of the City of Auckland at the census of 1896 stood at 31,424, and five years earlier at 28,613; but for purposes of comparison with the other large centres, the suburbs should be included. These had a population of 26,192, making a grand total of 57,616. The estimate of the Registrar-General, however, on the 31st of March, 1899, gave the population of the City alone at over 35,670. The five suburban boroughs totalled 13,551 at that date, and the suburban road districts, particulars of which appear only quinquennially, stood at 13,881 in 1893. It is evident, therefore, that Greater Auckland is the home of nearly 65,000 persons, or at least 10,000 more than any other combined city and suburbs in the colony. The number of dwellings in the borough in 1897 was 7,610.

In the borough alone there were 1,012 more females than males, or sixteen of the former to fifteen of the latter. In the Mount Eden Road district there were nearly five females to four males; in Parnell there were about six to five; in Ponsonby nearly seven to six; in Devonport eight to seven; and in Grey Lynn twelve to eleven. Almost a third of the total population consists of children under fifteen, and rather more than a third of persons over fifteen but under thirty-five. Old people are in slightly larger proportion than in Wellington. The children are about equal as between the sexes; but of persons from fifteen to thirty-five years of age, there is an excess of females averaging more than seven to five. The disproportion is highest in the Borough of Parnell, where the young women of between twenty and twenty-five years are in the proportion of very nearly two to one of the men of the same age period. Of the men of that age in city and suburbs there are ten times as many single as married, and of women there are three times as many. Rather more than a third of the men, and more than half of the women, between twenty-five and thirty years of age are married; though even at that age period Parnell has three single women for every two that are married. These figures go to prove that while the bread-winners have to leave the popular centre for the country districts, and for less favoured towns or countries, those who have freer choice prefer to live in Beautiful Auckland. It is on record now that Sir Maurice O'Rorke, in 1872, declined the Under-Secretaryship of the Colony, to which a salary of £800 per annum was attached, rather than live permanently away from Auckland.