Our homes and how to make them healthy / by R. Brudenell Carter [and others] ; edited by Shirley Forster Murphy.
- Date:
- 1883
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Our homes and how to make them healthy / by R. Brudenell Carter [and others] ; edited by Shirley Forster Murphy. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
951/972 (page 933)
![METROPOLITAN GOVERNMENT. acres under the Metropolitan Board of Works, whose jurisdiction in many matters extends over the City of London, is committed to forty-five reiaresentatives, witli the addition of a paid chairman, one representative to 1,600 acres, i.e., an area more than twice that of the whole of the City of London, and it gives less than one representative to each aggi-egate of population equal to the population of the City. But notwithstanding all this insignificance of area and population of the City of London, as compared with its newly created rival, it has an inner life and vigour which, by comparison in public importance and estimation, puts it far beyond the Metropolitan Board of Works or any other rival. The City is over-governed, and its expenditure is so great, that, commercially, its great corporation is scarcely solvent, for, of late years, the struggle for life and prestige has forced it into very great extravagance, which could only be met by heavy mortgages. Nevertheless it is to the extension of the City that the public look for the future basis of good government of London, because its constitution, like that of the provincial munici- palities before alluded to, is based on the will of the people, and the necessities of the present and future, and not upon the non-elastic rules and regulations of modern Acts of Parliament and Central Boards. The remedies for London government, as well as for all local government, are hot readily apparent. The City Chamberlain, in his book on the Statistical Vindication of London, published in ] 867, referring to the various existing evils, says, But to the remedy for all this evU, which lapse of time has permitted to grow, which the City of London might in former ages have dealt with piecemeal had it not been short-sighted and selfish—evil which no government will .now deal with except by palliatives, by sedatives, by cajolery, or by delay. The other principal governing bodies of London arg the vestries and district boards. Under the Metropolis Management Act they exercise uniform functions relating to the making and repair, and cleansing, watering, and lighting of streets, and they are the sanitary authorities empowered to remove dust and house refuse, abate nuisances, and to prevent disease. Beyond these general powers they exercise duties more or less important in difierent districts under the provision of local or general Acts, and it is these older powers which prevent any uniform description of the duties of vestries or their officers. In one or two large areas of the Metropolis all local functions may be practically supervised by one chief officer, although he may have to subscribe himself as Vestry Clerk, Clerk to the Vestry, Clerk to the Churchwardens and Overseers, Clerk to the Guardians, Clerk to the Trustees or the Governors and Directors, or to the Assessment Committee, or to the Burial Board, or to the Commissioners of Baths, still there is something like a unity of action; but when, as in some cases, there is a vestry clerk under an old local Act, actmg under one body, with a clerk to the vestry under another, another person as clerk to the guardians, and so on, each authority with overlapping and conflicting duties, there is no wonder that householders lose interest in the problem of under* standmg local government. There are probably not ten persons in any London district who know the complications of the government existing in their district In one district the Guardians of the Poor make all rates, and the vestry ask the guardians for the money they require, not for themselves only but for the MetropoUtau Board, the school Board, and other boards. In another district the guardians in like manner ask the vestry for the money they require for themselves as well ^ for](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21958300_0951.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
