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ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT
STATUTORY AUTHORITIES FOR
SPECIAL PURPOSES
ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERN-
MENT: STATUTORY AU-
THORITIES FOR SPECIAL
PURPOSES. BY SIDNEY AND
BEATRICE WEBB.
Wa S'So
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., LONDON,
NEW YORK, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA AND
MADRAS. 1922.
v.S
op- • 2_
PEEFACE
To most people, if not to all, the chief interest of this book will
lie in the last two chapters, which analyse the development of
English Local Government from the Eevolution to the Muni-
cipal Corporations Act. This description of how the " Old
Principles" were, between 1689 and 1835, gradually super-
seded by the " New Principles " summarises the contents, not
merely of the present volume on Statutory Authorities for
Special Purposes, but also of our two preceding works, The
Parish and the County (1907), and The Manor and the Borough
(1908). The three together complete our account of the
structure of English Local Government. 1
The Statutory Authorities for Special Purposes — the Com-
missioners of Sewers, the Incorporated Guardians of the Poor,
the Turnpike Trusts and the Improvement Commissioners —
have not previously been made the subject of historical study.
We do not know whether our taste is peculiar, but we have
found it interesting, and even exciting, to trace the origin and
explore the development of the " Lords of the Level of Romney
Marsh," and the other hitherto undescribed organisations for
land drainage, which present, to the historian, some novel
constitutional features. We have lingered willingly among
the records of the " Corporations of the Poor," and the various
other Boards of Guardians, Trustees or Directors, by which,
from the end of the seventh century onwards, both rural and
urban parishes repeatedly experimented in Poor Law adminis-
1 We may refer also to our studies of particular functions of Local Govern-
ment, such as English Prisons under Local Government (1922), The Story of the
King's Highway (1913), The History of Liquor Licensing in England (1903),
The State and the Doctor (1910), The Prevention of Destitution (1911 and 1920),
English Poor Law Policy (1910), and Grants in, Aid (1911 and 1920).
v
vi PREFACE
tratioii. The vast network of Turnpike Trusts, by which all
England and Wales was once covered, seemed to us well to
deserve some record. And we were interested to find, in the
entirely unstudied archives of the hundreds of bodies of
Commissioners for Paving, Cleaning, Lighting, Watching and
[mprcmng the streets of the various English towns — and not
in the unreformed Municipal Corporations — the beginnings of
the most important functions of our nineteenth century muni-
cipalities. But whether or not these annals of the less well-
known parts of Local Government are found of popular
interest, we enter a plea, not only for a more systematic
preservation by Town and County Councils of the records of
I In isc who were their predecessors in local administration, but
also for the more frequent study of these neglected sources by
historians of the English people.
Much of the work of investigation of these records was
done between 1899 and 1908 ; and we owe thanks, not only
to their custodians, by whom we were always courteously
received, but also to our helpers in what proved an extensive
as well as a protracted task. Among those whose work is
embodied in the present volume, we must mention Mr. F. H.
Spencer, LL.D., author of Municipal Origins, now in the
Ministry of Education; Mrs. Spencer, I ).Sc. (Econ.) ; Miss M.
Bulkley, B.Sc. (Econ.) ; and Miss Hadley, archivist to the
I mdon County Council. For criticisms and suggestions, none
the less valuable because we have not always implicitly incor-
porated them, we thank especially Professor Graham Wallas
and Mr. Earold Laski, of the London School of Economics ami
Political Science. To Miss Ivy Schmidt, now Mrs. Bolton, we
are indebted for much laborious co-operation, and for the full
index.
SIDNEY and BEATKICE WEBB.
11 Grosvbnob Road, Westminster,
September 1922.
CONTENTS
PAGK
Preface ....... v
Introduction ....... 1
CHAPTER I
The Court of Sewers . . . . .13
CHAPTER II
The Incorporated Guardians of the Poor. . 107
CHAPTER III
The Turnpike Trusts . . . . .152
CHAPTER IV
The Improvement Commissioners .... 235
CHAPTER V
A Century and a Half of English Local Government :
The Old Principles ..... 350
CHAPTER VI
The Emergence of the New Principles . . .397
Index of Persons ...... 487
Index of Places . . . . . ,493
Index of Subjects ...... 505
vn
INTRODUCTION
In our former volumes on English Local Government 1 we
described the organisation and development, between 1689 and
1835, both of the Parish and the County, which professedly
covered all England and Wales, and of the various types of
Manor and Borough, which stood out as islands of franchises,
immunities or exceptions to the common rule and jurisdiction.
But these local governing bodies do not exhaust the list. There
existed also, up and down the country, a number of other
authorities, unconnected with the older bodies, which had been,
in particular areas, for particular functions, by Royal Commission
and Parliamentary enactment, superposed indifferently upon
Parish and Manor, Borough and County. These, in a special
sense statutory administrations, have now to be described. They
fall, as we shall see, into four main classes, which have severally
little or no connection with each other. We shall deal first
with the archaic Courts of Sewers, which, over extensive areas
of England, administered the sluices, the embankments and the
drainage that alone made the land habitable. The second class
comprises the peculiar bodies of Incorporated Guardians to
whom was transferred, at the expense of the Parish, a large part
of the administration of Poor Relief. We shall then describe
the network of Turnpike Trusts, which, in the course of the
eighteenth century, transformed our main roads. The last class
is that of the Lighting, Watching, Paving, Cleansing, Street or
Improvement Commissioners, in whom, from the middle of the
1 The Parish and the County, 1907 ; The Manor and the Borough, 2 vols.,
1908. We may refer also to other volumes of our work on English Local
Government, dealing with separate functions, namely, The Story of the King's
Highway, 1913 ; and English Prisons under Local Government, 1922 ; together
with an incomplete sketch entitled The History of Liquor Licensing in England,
1903. A volume on the evolution of the Relief of the Poor and the Repression
of Vagrancy is in preparation.
1 B
? INTRODUCTION
eighteenth century, the bulk of what we now call municipal
government came gradually to be vested.
These Statutory Authorities, which have not hitherto en-
gaged the attention of historians, 1 comprised, in the aggregate,
something like eighteen himdred separate Local Governing
Bodies. They were, accordingly, more than eight times as
numerous as the Municipal Corporations, about which, because
of the Parliamentary importance of many of them, so much
has been said ; and thirty times as numerous as the Courts of
Justices in Quarter Sessions that governed the Counties. The
jurisdiction of these eighteen hundred Statutory Authorities
extended, in the aggregate, over a much larger area, and over
a considerably greater population, than the jurisdiction of all
the Municipal Corporations put together ; and, as it may be
suggested, affected much more closely the lives of the people.
Even in respect of their pecuniary transactions, these Statutory
Authorities hold an important place. By 1835 their aggregate
annual receipts had risen to nearly three millions sterling, being
(until the dramatic rise of the Poor Rate in the nineteenth
century) not far short of the contemporary annual revenue of
all the other Local Governing Authorities in the Kingdom put
together. And if we measure our interest in past experiments
in social organisation by the extent to which they have severally
contributed to the Local Government of our own time, the
Statutory Authorities, as we shall see, may claim our attention
1 Reference to the various books dealing with these Statutory Authorities
will be found at the beginnings of the following chapters.
It may be added that we do not deal with the bodies of Enclosure Commis-
sions formed in pursuance of some four thousand separate Enclosure Acts.
These Commissions, transient in their existence and in their functions, power-
less to levy a tax on the public, and dealing only with individual property
rights, cannot be deemed Local Governing Bodies. For the Enclosure
and the proceedings taken under them, see An Enquiry into the Influence which
Enclosures have had upon the Population of England, by John Howlett, 1786;
The Case of Labourers in Husbandry Stated, by David Davies, 17'.).-) ; Commons
and Common Colds, by T. E. Scrutton, 1887; The Domesday of Inciosures,
1517-18, by L B. Leadam (Royal Historical Society, 1897); Commons and Common
■. by Q. slater. litiiT; History of the English Agricultural Labourer, by
W. Hasbaoh, L908; Th\ Disappearance of th* Small Landowner, by A. H.
Johnson, 1909; Commons, Forestsand FootpatJis, by Viseounl Eversley, L910;
Tht Village Labourer, 1760 1832, by J. L and Barbara Hammond, 1911;
rum Land and Enclosures, by Sir K. < '. k. Qonner, L912 ; Tht Agrarian
lern in th Sixteenth Century, by I:. II. Tawney, 1912 ; 1% Great 1.
"/''' '■ - >•< Lands in Wales, by I. Bowen, I'.U l ; English F, tns, by If. L
. I'M..: EncUmm and Redistribution of Land, by \\ . II R. Cortler, 1920,
"AD HOC" BODIES 3
as the direct ancestors, more truly than the Municipal Corpora-
tion or the Manor, of a large part of the powers and functions,
not only of our Borough Councils, as of our Urban and Rural
District Councils, but also of the greatest of all our local govern-
ing authorities, the London County Council itself.
We can find no better general designation for these four
classes of bodies established one by one to perform specifically
prescribed functions — as we should now say, " ad hoc bodies " —
than Statutory Authorities for Special Purposes. They differed
essentially from the immemorial Parish, Manor and County, and
even from the Manorial Borough and Municipal Corporation,
which, in some cases, lawfully existed by prescription, in each
of them taking its origin from some special legislative act,
establishing, not a class of local governing bodies, but one
particular Local Governing Authority to discharge one designated
function, for one prescribed locality. Each of them enjoyed
its powers and incurred its obligations, not by Common Law,
but exclusively by virtue of that particular legislative act.
It is true that, conformably to the general rule that there are,
in Nature, no absolutely sharp lines of division between classes
of any kind, we may detect a certain approximation between the
Manorial Boroughs and Municipal Corporations, on the one
hand, some of which were established by particular legislative
acts, whether charter or statute, and, on the other, the Courts
of Sewers, which were actually constituted by commission from
the King, though from 1532 onwards, always under the authority
of the Statute of Sewers ; and which (at least in the exceptional
case of the Lords of the Level of Romney Marsh) could claim that
some of their powers, obligations and procedure were rooted in
immemorial custom, prescription and Common Law. But apart
from this anomalous approximation of marginal instances, the
Statutory Authorities for Special Purposes introduce us to a
characteristic development of English Local Government in
what is now known as the Local Act.
The Local Act, of which we find exceptional instances as
early as the fourteenth century, but which is specially character-
istic of the period from the Revolution to the Municipal Corpora-
tions Act with which we are concerned, is, we believe, in many
of its features, peculiar to this country. It is, of course, not an
enactment of the inhabitants, or of the governing body, of the
4 INTRODUCTION
locality to which it refers, but an Act of Parliament, an enact-
ment of the National Legislature itself. But unlike the better-
known Public General Acts of the National Legislature the
Local Act does not apply to the whole Kingdom, but only to
the district or governing body to which its terms relate. Thus,
in 1384, the Act 8 Richard II. authorises " pavage " in the
Borough of Southampton ; in 1488 the statute 4 Henry VII. c. 21
is entitled " An Act for the inhabitants of the Town of South-
wold " ; in 1542, the Act 33 Henry VIII. c. 35 empowers the
Mayor and the Dean of Gloucester to provide a water supply ;
in 1647 an Ordinance of the Commonwealth establishes the
Corporation of the Poor of the City of London in order that
the indigent may be more effectually provided for. From the
beginning of the eighteenth century these Local Acts increased
steadily in number, and after the middle of that century they
were every year passed in crowds. And although what were
in effect Local Acts were known, as we have seen, before the
middle of the seventeenth century, and have been continuously
employed down to our own day, those of the particular century
and a half that we have here under review did, for the most
part, what was almost unknown before 1647 and came speedity
to an end after 1835, namely establish (or at least grant a renewed
term of existence to) particular local governing bodies for the
performance of local government functions. It is, in fact,
mainly as an instrument not merely conferring powers but
actually creating local government structure of a peculiar kind —
in Turnpike Trust or Incorporation of Guardians of the Poor,
Paving or Improvement Commission — that the Local Act finds
for us its greatest interest. 1
The Local Act (along with " Private," " Personal " and other
• utes not classed as " Public General Acts ") is a Parliamentary
1 For this reason we do not deal with the statutes, often called Private or
Personal, whioh merely affect the status of individuals, or their property
righta Such Arts concerning individual eases of legitimacy, naturalisation,
marriage 01 di\orcc, the authorisation of private lotteries or the settlement of
qoI to mi nt ion also the reallotmenl in severalty of lands held in common
(Enclo ure Acts), were exceedingly numerous down to the beginning of the
nineteenth oentury, but have since become rare. On the other hand, statutes
incorporating companies for business enterprises, of which the New River
Company of IM7 was an exceptionally early example, became, intheeighte<
and nineteenth centuries, down to the passing of the Companies Act of 1862,
eedinglj common for canals, railways, hanks, waterworks, gasworks, etc
THE LOCAL ACT 5
statute enacted, like any other, by the King " by and with the
advice and consent " of the House of Lords and House of
Commons ; and going through the same stages of first, second
and third reading, committee and report in both Houses of
Parliament. Originally, as it seems, it was dealt with in all
respects as if it were what is now called a Public General Act.
Gradually, however, the two Houses of Parliament evolved (but
scarcely before the nineteenth century, and not effectively until
after 1832) x additional safeguards and precautions in the conces-
sion of statutory authority to private individuals, local authorities
or groups of persons. 2 Thus, special notice of the proposed
1 How careless was the practice in the eighteenth century may be judged
from the following example. In 1772 we learn from the Parliamentary Register
that " Sir William Meredith moved, That it might be a general order, that no
Bill, or clause in a Bill, making any offence capital, should be agreed to but in
a Committee of the whole House. He observed that at present the facility
of passing such clauses was shameful : that he was once passing a Committee
room, when only one Member was holding a Committee, with a clerk's boy ;
he happened to hear something of hanging ; he immediately had the curiosity
to ask what was going forward in that small Committee that could merit such a
punishment ? He was answered that it was an Enclosing Bill, in which a
great many poor people were concerned, who opposed the Bill ; that they
feared those people would obstruct the execution of the Act, and therefore this
clause was to make it capital felony in any one who did so. This resolu-
tion was unanimously agreed to." {Parliamentary Register, Jan. 21, 1772 ; The
Village Labourer, by J. L. and Barbara Hammond, 1911, p. 64.)
2 For the gradual evolution of Parliamentary procedure in respect to
statutes other than Public General Acts (whether " private," " local and
personal," estate, divorce, nationalisation, enclosure, road, etc.) the student
will consult the various Reports of Select Committees of the House of Commons
on Private Bills (or Private Business) in 1810, 1821, 1824, 1825, 1831, 1837,
1838, 1841, 1846 and 1847 ; and the Journals of the House of Commons and
House of Lords respectively, as cited in the undermentioned works. The
ordinary enquirer will find sufficient information in the last named of them,
which (although not indicated by the title) is an interesting and valuable
monograph on the subject of Local Acts, deserving more attention than it has
yet received.
The Solicitor's Instructor in Parliament concerning Estate and Inclosure
Bills, by Charles Thomas Ellis, 1 799 ; this extended and republished as Practical
Remarks and Precedents of Proceedings in Parliament relative to Bills for Inclos-
ing and Draining Lands, making Turnpike Roads, etc., 1802 (and subsequent
editions down to 1813) ; The Manner of Proceeding upon Bills in the Commons,
by Sir George Bramwell, 1809 ; Practical Instructions on the Passing of Private
Bills through Both Houses of Parliament, by a Parliamentary Agent, 1827 ;
Proceedings in Private Bills, by Thomas M. Sherwood, 1829-1831 ; On Passing
Private Bills, by John Halcomb, 1836 ; The Practice of the Court of Referees
on Private Bills in Parliament, by Frederick Clifford and A. G. Rickards, 2 vols. ;
Cases decided during the Sessions [from 1867 onwards] by the Court of Referees
on Private Bills in Parliament, by the same ; and The History of Private Bill
Legislation, by Frederick Clifford, 2 vols. 1885 ; Parliamentary Costs, by E.
Wheeler, 1881 ; Private Bill Legislation and Provisional Orders, by L. Macassey,
6 INTRODUCTION
legislation had to be given to all persons whose interests would
be affected by it, and the service of such notice had to be formally
proved before the Bill was allowed to proceed. Fees had to be
paid to various officials of each House. A whole code of prece-
dents became established, which had to be followed under penalty
of grave risk of the Bill failing to become law. From 1800
(when a salary was assigned to the office), if not, indeed, from
1778 or earlier, 1 the Chairman of Committees of the House of
Lords gradually assumed authority, for the protection of the
public interest, to scrutinise closely the provisions of each Bill,
prior to its formal introduction into either House ; and the
veto of the " Lords' Chairman " upon any novel encroachment
on public interests or private rights — meaning that this trusted
representative would advise the House summarily to throw out
any Bill which contained anything to which he had formally
objected — seriously limited the demands of promoters of this
legislation. And when all these preliminaries had been gone
through, every Bill not classed as " Public "—whether " Private,"
" Personal " or " Local "—had to run the gauntlet of special
consideration by a committee of each House in succession,
before which, in public session, witnesses had to prove the
necessity and desirability of granting the proposed statutory
powers, and other witnesses could demonstrate the inconvenience
or the undesirability of such a course. Before these Parlia-
mentary committees all the parties could be, and from 1832
onwards, almost invariably were, represented by learned counsel,
who not only examined and cross-examined the witnesses, but
also addressed the tribunal in support of the evidence of their
respective clients. The final stage in this evolution of procedure
was reached in the decision of both Houses of Parliament, not
arrived at until the third decade of the nineteenth century,
to appoint their " Private Bill Committees " in all cases
1887; Standing Orders of the Lords mid Commons relativi to Private Bills, by J.
Bigg, L889; PrivaU Bill Procedure, by C. Dodd and H. W. W. Wilberforoe, 1898 ;
Thi , of PrivaU BU18, by <;. J. Wheeler, 1900 ; together with such general
.1 Treatise on the Law, 1'iitilegcs, Proceedings ant Usagt of Parliam
by Sir T. Erskine May, 1906; Legislative Methods and Forms, !>y Sir C. P.
Obert, 1901 ; and Becht und Technik des englischen ParliamerUarismns, by J< i
Redlich, L905, translated as The Procedure of the House of Commons, 1908;
the whole examined and summarised, as regards Local Aets, in Minn
Origins, by F. II. Bpencer, 191 1.
1 Municipal Origins, bj I'. IF. Spencer, 1911, pp. 325-329.
THE LEGISLATIVE OUTPUT 7
from among members without pecuniary interest in or local
association with the projects of the promoters of the Bills ; x
and to adopt, as the guiding principle for the action of these
committees, the assumption that they should act strictly as
judicial tribunals, eliminating all personal predilection and
party bias.
These Local Acts constituted, during the century and a half
with which we are here dealing, actually the greater part, so far
as bulk is concerned, of the legislative output of Parliament.
" If any contemplative person," says Mr. Spencer, " will go to
one of our great libraries and stand for a moment before the
ponderous mass of volumes containing the Acts of our Parlia-
ment from the beginnings of its history until to-day, he will
notice a curious phenomenon. He will observe that the space
occupied by legislation for the century from about 1745 to 1845
is immensely greater than that needed for any other century of
our Parliamentary history. As might be expected, a single
volume will contain the legislation of a whole reign, or some-
times several reigns, from the time of the Plantagenets almost
until the departure of the Stuarts. From about 1700 onwards,
however, the bulk of the annual output increases, until a year's
legislative work begins to fill a stout volume ; and as soon as we
get beyond the middle of the eighteenth century two, three or even
four volumes begin to be required. . . . The greater part of the
tremendous bulk of legislation of this period consisted ... of
. . . Local Aqts." 2 Even omitting the four thousand Enclosure
Acts, and all the " Private " and " Personal " legislation, the
statutes specifically establishing or continuing one or other of
the eighteen hundred Local Authorities described in the present
volume, or altering their powers or obligations, must number in
the aggregate something like ten thousand. This enormous
array of legislation has, so far, scarcely been explored, or even
1 Even as late as 1825 it was the practice, as reported by the House of
Commons Committee of that year, for each Bill to be " committed to the
member who is charged with its management, and such other members as he
may choose to name in the House, and the members serving for a particular
County (usually the County immediately connected with the object of the
Bill, and the adjoining Counties) ; and consequently it has been practically
found that the members to whom Bills have been committed have been gener-
ally those who have been most interested in the result." (Quoted in The Village
Labourer, by J. L. and Barbara Hammond, 1911, pp. 45-46.)
2 Municipal Origins, by F. H. Spencer, 1911, p. 1.
8
INTRODUCTION
surveyed by historians, 1 whether what they were writing about
was the evolution of law, of local government, of public adminis-
tration, of manners and morals, or of Parliament itself. We
were ourselves daunted by the portentous magnitude and the
repulsive aridity of the mass of sources that stood before us.
But it was plain that the history of English Local Government
was not to be understood without an analysis of the statutes
upon which it so largely depended, even if they were styled
Local Acts ; and great and wearisome as was the work, it yielded
much of interest and value.
What adds to the difficulty of consulting these Local Acta
of the eighteenth century is the great length and pedantically
1 Thus Fitzjames Stephen, writing a learned history of English criminal
law, could content himself with the following reference to the D of Parlia-
mentary statutes which created innumerable novel crimes, substituted for the
Manorial Courts the authority of the Justices of thi . and practically
revolutionised criminal procedure for the bulk of offences by introducing
summary jurisdiction. " At a time which I am not able to gin villi precision,"
wrote this historian of 1853, "but which from expressions in the Report of the
Municipal Corporations Commission I think must have been in the latter part
of the last century, it became customary to pass Local Improvement Acts by
which the management of matters connected with the police of towns was
usually vested in a body of Trustees or Commissioners distinct from the
Corporation itself. There were great differences in the manner in which these
powers wen- allotted." {History of the Criminal Law of England, by E
Fitzjames Stephen, 1853, vol. i. pp. 195-196.) Other historians have been
equally neglectful. W. E. H. Lecky wrote his eight volumes on the eighteenth
century with scarcely a reference to these Loc : d Acts. Spencer Walpole, who
seems to have compiled his History of England from the Conclusion of tin- Great
War in 1815 almost v:,< Lusively from a file of the Times and a set of the Blue-
books, devotes only three pages out of his five volumes to Private Bill legislation
(vol. iv. pp. 15-18). Sir George Nicholls, for his History of the English Poor Laic,
ibundantly from every Public General Act that comes anywhere
near poor relief, but absolutely ignores all the enactments that were notch
as Public Gen< ral Acts, i \« a when they dealt explicitly with poor relief it
How illogical is this ignoring of Local Acts may be seen from the fact that
the classification of Acts of Parliament has varied from time to time. Thus,
prior to L702 " Turnpike Acts " were " public " j from lTui' to ITlM they were
" private" ; from 1720 to 17."i:> they were printed and bound with the ordinary
Public Gene] ; from 1753 to 1790 they were hound separately, and are
d< cribed a ' Public V ■•, oo1 printed in the collection,"' or more succinctly,
as " Road Acts,"" whilst from L798 to 1868 they were included among " Acts
Local and Personal." From 1 798 to 1868 all the statutes wen- divided among
three classes, namely, (1) Public General Acts, (2) Local and I Acts
declared public and to be judicially noticed; and (3) Private and Personal
Bince L868 the three divisions have been (1) Public General '
(2) Local Acts, and (3) Private Acts. (House of Commons Journals, vol. lii.
p. 113; History of Private Bill Legislation, by F. Clifford, L887 89, vol. i. p. 269 ;
(eihodsoi i, by Sir C. P. Ilbert, 1901, pp. 26-27 ; Municipal
Origins, by !■". II. Sp ucer, 1911, pp 46-46; The Story of the King's Highway,
byS. and B. Webb, 1913, p. lis.)
CUMBROUS PHRASEOLOGY g
involved phraseology of their clauses. This was due to the
necessity of repeating and re-enacting in each statute all the
general provisions as to the procedure for acquiring land and other
matters of common form, which are now embodied for general
application in the Lands Clauses Acts, and other statutes of like
character. In the typical Local Act of the eighteenth century
all this essentially " common form " had to be set out in the
cumbrous and elaborate phraseology of the legal draughtsman
of the time. Only sparingly and occasionally could the eighteenth-
century Parliament, deprived of the assistance of the Ministers
(who remained absolutely indifferent to the requirements and
the troubles of Local Government), bring itself to enact any
general statute giving powers to all Parish officers, to all Turn-
pike Trusts, to all Municipal Corporations, or to all County
authorities to carry out their respective functions. Accordingly,
the successive changes in structure and function, the gradual
alteration in the idea of what the various kinds of local governing
bodies should be and do, the evolution in the very conception
of government itself, have to be traced in the variations, from
one decade to another, in the contents of the thousands of Local
Acts, whilst the results of these variations may be verified in
the archives revealing the development of the various Local
Authorities themselves.
In the following chapters we shall describe, first, the ancient
Courts of Sewers, with their archaic and partly traditional
organisation of juries and presentments ; next the Incorporated
Guardians of the Poor ; then the growing multitude of Turnpike
Trusts ; and finally the bodies of Paving, Cleansing, Lighting,
Watching, Street or Improvement Commissioners, and their
work in the crowded urban districts. And we shall find, not
only that the life-histories of these eighteen hundred Statutory
Authorities for Special Purposes afford us a new vision of what
the life of the people of England in the eighteenth century
actually was, but also that the evolution of structure and func-
tion of these little-studied Local Authorities led to results im-
portant in subsequent developments. These Local Authorities
it was, far more than the Parish, the Borough and the County,
that brought in the paid professional staffs of voluntarily serving
officials out of which has sprung our modern municipal Civil
Service. It was among these Statutory Authorities for Special
IO
INTRODUCTION
J'u eposes that first developed the essentially English system of
administration by committees of representatives of the electorate
of ratepayers, directing and controlling the staff of professional
officers. It is in the long succession of Local Acts establishing
or continuing these Statutory Authorities that we watch the
earlier stages of that creation of new misdemeanours and that
multiplication of merely police offences, together with the
almost limitless extension of summary jurisdiction, which has
become so characteristic of modern civilisation. And above all,
it is in these Local Acts, and particularly in the practice of the
latest of the four classes of Local Authorities for Special Purposes
which they set up, namely the Street Commissioners, that we
find the direct lineal ancestors, alike of the multiplicity of
functions relating to sanitation, police and all the amenities of
urban life now characterising our municipalities, and of the
rates, or ever-growing municipal taxes which, whilst grumbling,
we nevertheless willingly contribute in return for the literally
inestimable services rendered. 1
1 This vast and chaotic mass of legislation remained almost unnoticed
by contemporary jurists and reformers. It is remarkable how little it engaged
the attention, to name three very different observers, cither of Jeremy Bentham,
or of William Cobbett or of Francis Place. Sir Samuel Romilly's attention
was called to the savage punishments authorised by some of the Local Acts ;
and his intervention led to the passing of Public General Acts in 1814-16 (54
George III. c. 170 ; 56 George III. c. 129 ; ) repealing such clauses wherever
liny occurred. But nothing was done to restrain the authority over the
helpless poor carelessly given by many of these statutes. When, in the middle
of the nineteenth century, Toulmin Smith was vainly striving to re-establish
what he fondly imagined to be the " self-determination " of the ancient Parish
or Manor, and the inviolable supremacy of the Common Law, it was the Local
Acts (which he chose to consider a quite recent innovation) that excited his
greatest animadversion. " There is," he wrote in 1852, " one form which
modern law-making takes which needs reform. It is a form at once probably
the most burdensome of any to members of Parliament, and one of the most
pernicious in itself; while it is a wholly illegitimate field of Parliamentary
labour. It is the system of Local Acts. . . . There arc a mass of Local Acts
which never ought to conic near Parliament at all. All Borough Acts, and
others of that class, come under this head. . . . Under cover of these Local
Acts, infringements arc made upon the constitutional rights and liberties of
freemen which are truly astounding; and that without any possibility of
redress. Wide powers of summary jurisdiction are often given in direct
opposition to the spirit and principles of the Common Law. ... A man in
tin pursuit of his lawful calling or in the course of needful self-protection, finds
the all-essential rights which he enjoys at Common Law, and which no charter
of the Crown ran invade, nor even his own consent take away, cut from under
him by some hidden section of a Local Ac! of Parliament b never heard of."
Local Self-Oovernm nt, by J, Toulmin Smith, 1852, pp, 147-150 ; Bee also Minute
on Public //■ alth l.< gidation prepared at (he Reqw st of Sir William Molesworth, by
the same, L863;and Local Self-Qovernmeni Unmystified,by the same, 1857, p. 92.)
1
THE CHANGING ENVIRONMENT n
With the present volume we complete our account of the
structure of English Local Government from 1689 to 1835.
It seems, accordingly, convenient to close the volume with an
analysis of the ideas and conceptions, or as we may say, the
principles, in which this structure was rooted at the beginning
of the period, and the manner in which they were affected by
the social evolution of this century and a half. The period, as
it is unnecessary to remind the reader, was one of exceptional
change. At the close of the seventeenth century, although the
old order was already in an advanced stage of decay, England
was still predominantly an agricultural community, with the
greater part of the land in common fields, cultivated by small
working farmers closely bound together by social ties and family
relationships with the cottagers, the bulk of them having certain
property rights or customary privileges as tenants of the manor,
copyholders or freeholders, or at least enjoying rights of common.
In the urban centres, even in the ports and the then rapidly
growing Metropolis, the greater part of the manufacturing
industry and the internal trading was still carried on by small
master-craftsmen, each employing only a few journeymen and
apprentices who lived in the families of their employers, and
often married their masters' daughters ; or by independent
handicraftsmen who directly served their own customers. By
the beginning of the nineteenth century the economic organisa-
tion of society had almost entirely changed. The landowners
had come to let the soil on commercial contracts for steadily
increasing rents to farmers who could invest, in what became
essentially a business enterprise, capitals of from a few hundred
to some thousands of pounds each. The men, women and children,
who worked on the land and constituted at that time four-fifths
of the entire population of the rural parishes, had, by the opera-
tion of the enclosures, the absorption of the little copyholds
and freeholds, and the disappearance of the manorial system,
for the most part, lost whatever property rights they had
possessed, and had sunk to be merely a wage-earning proletariate,
to be ultimately deeply pauperised by the " parish pay." In
the rapidly developing urban districts, in the mining areas, in
the growing ports, in the greatly swollen Metropolis and even
in the relatively stagnant county towns, the growth of the new
machine industries, the vast capitalist enterprises in mining,
12 INTRODUCTION
in shipping, and in commerce as well as in manufactures, and
the enormous development of both internal and international
trade had brought the town populations to a like " cash nexus '
between a constantly shifting body of capitalist employers, many
of them amassing great fortunes, taking on and dismissing,
according to the fluctuations of speculative demand, armies of
unorganised manual workers whom they knew only as the
" hands " to whom they paid an inadequate and inconstant wage.
Such an economic revolution, coincident with the gradual
emergence of the idea of political Democracy, and with the
spread of Nonconformity in religion, could not fail to make its
mark on the local institutions. In the present volume, taken in
conjunction with those on The Parish and the County, and
The Manor and the Borough, we have sought to describe the
myriad changes in the structure of Local Government that did,
in fact, occur between 1689 and 1835. What remains to be
done, and what the reader will find attempted in the last two
chapters of the present volume, is to analyse and summarise
what we may call the intellectual features that these myriad
and apparently disconnected changes had in common. We
shall seek to show how it was that an unorganised congeries of
very varied Local Authorities — rooted mainly in immemorial
local custom and the Common Law ; arising out of an ancient
vocational organisation of society ; dependent on the universal
obligation to serve in turn gratuitously in the various public
offices ; with authority confined to the owners of property,
meaning originally property in land — developed into another
congeries of no less varied Local Authorities ; deriving their
power mainly from constantly amended Parliamentary statutes ;
increasingly getting their functions performed by hired labourers
and profitmaking contractors ; and progressively shedding the
remnants of vocational organisation in favour of control by the
:< consumers " of the services, as property owners or rate-payers
the resulting chaos leading, finally, in the Poor Law Amend-
ment Act of 1831 and the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835,
to the initiation of what has. in the course of another century,
proved to be a systematic reorganisation of Local Government
on the l»asis of a universal Democracy.
CHAPTER I
THE COURT OF SEWERS
It is difficult, in the twentieth century, to form any adequate
conception of the extent to which the England of the Middle
Ages, or even down to the end of the seventeenth century, was
made up, to use the picturesque words of " the famous and
learned Robert Callis," himself a Lincolnshire Sewer Commis-
sioner, of " huge, great and vast fens and marishes." x
1 No satisfactory account of the work and proceedings of the various Courts
of Sewers has been written. The student will consult the well-known Beading
of the Famous and Learned Robert Callis, Esquire, upon the Statute of Sewers,
first published in 1647, the latest edition being that of 1824 ; also The Learned
Reading of John Heme . . . concerning Commissioners of Sewers, 1659 ; and
The Laws of Sewers, or the Office and Authority of Commissioners of Sewers, 1726
and 1732. The Justice of the Peace, by Theodore Barlow, 1745, gives (pp. 484-
494) a clear account of what was then taken as law on the subject ; whilst
The Law of Waters and Sewers, by Humphry W. Woolrych, 1830, conveniently
supplies a later picture. The present law is most easily consulted in The Law
of Land Drainage and Sewers, by G. G. Kennedy and J. S. Saunders, 1884 ;
The Land Drainage Act of 1861, by T. Thring, 1862 ; or The Land Drainage
Act, 1861, by R. B. Grantham, 1865. The Laws and Customs of Rom.net/ Marsh
have been many times printed, the last separate edition being that of 1840.
For the early history, the great storehouse of materials is The History of
Imbanking and Draining of Divers Fens and Marshes, by (Sir) William Dugdale,
1652, reprinted 1772, together with the works subsequently cited in con-
nection with the Fenland, the Bedford Level, Romney Marsh, and Lincoln-
shire respectively. A useful collection of documents is given in Public
Works in Mediaeval Law, by C. T. Flower (Selden Society, 1915). Some
idea of the engineering problems involved may be gained from such
books as that On the Drainage of Lands, Towns and Buildings, by G. D.
Dempsey, 1890 and 1894 ; The Drainage of Fens and Lowlands, by W. H.
Wheeler, 1888 ; History of the Fens of South Lincolnshire, by W. H. Wheeler,
1894, with a useful bibliography ; Fens and Floods of Mid Lincolnshire, by
J. S. Padley, 1882 ; or the papers in the Proceedings of the Institute of Civil
Engineers. The best brief accounts are those in The Lives of the Engineers, by
Samuel Smiles, 1861, vol. i. part i., and Descriptive and Statistical Account of
the British Empire, by J. R. MacCulloch, chap. i. sec. 4. We have, however,
been able to draw our information mostly from the MS. minutes of the Com-
13
2
i 4 THE COURT OF SEWERS
In the eastern counties, what is now the great level plain
of the Fenland was, every flood-time, for literally hundreds of
square miles, one broad waste of water, and of water, as Defoe
says, " the colour of brewed ale " ; * in some parts deep pools
and river channels, elsewhere merely beds of waving rushes, bog
myrtle and flowering grasses, the home of innumerable wildfowl,
and, in autumn, of flocks of starlings, which, when disturbed,
rose in thick clouds. Here and there, on a patch of higher land,
would be a hamlet clustering round the church, or the hall of
the squire, whilst, when the day happened to be free from fog *
the towers and spires of Ely and Peterborough, Boston and Lynn,
Whittlesey and Croyland caught the eye for miles. But besides
these larger patches, where for a few acres there existed " winter
lands," the whole district was studded with islets, having only a
few square yards above the flood-time water level, each with its
little homestead among the willows and poplars, its tiny field
behind the banks, and its pasturage on the " summerlands " of
green grass flat, and of browner peat where the fen lay deeper ;
with here and there the darker velvet green of alders amid wind-
ing streams and shining meres, and rich sedge-grass so slightly
uncovered by the summer droughts that, as noticed by a lady
traveller in 1695, the " many swans' nests on little hillocks of
earth in the wet ground " looked "as if swimming " amid the
broods of cygnets. 3 This " vast morass," as Camden calls it,
where, to use the words of Dugdale, " there is no element good,
the air being for the most part cloudy, gross and full of rotten
harrs ; the water putrid and muddy, yea, full of loathsome
vermin ; and the fire noisome by the stink of smoky hassocks,"
missioners of Sewers for Somerset, East Kent, Greenwich, Surrey and Kent,
Poplar, St. Katherine's, Tower Hamlets, Holborn and Finsbury and West-
minster ; together with those of the Governors of the Bedford Level (North
Level), and those of the unique " Lords of the Level " of Romney Marsh.
1 A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, by Daniel Defoe, vol. iii.
p. 28 of 1748 edition.
2 The " fogs and stagnant air " of the Fens, mentioned by Dugdale as
prevalent, were execrated by Defoe, who tells us that, early in the eighteenth
century, the whole district was, in autumn, "generally . . . covered with
BO thai when the downs and higher grounds of the adjacent country
glistered with the beams of the sun. the Isle of Hy seemed wrapped up
in mist and darkness, bo that nothing could be discerned bat now and then
the cupola of Ely Monster" (ibid, vol. i. p. 91, vol. iii. pp. 19-28, of edition
of i:
3 Throng) I. ila\ ' with a Side Saddh in il" Reign of William and Mary,
being tin Diary of C eh . edited hy the Hon. Mrs. Crilhths, 18S8, p. 131.
THE "INNINGS" 15
afforded " overmuch harbour to a rude and almost barbarous
sort of lazy and beggarly people." 1
On the other side of England, many miles of Somersetshire,
in the broad flats through which the Parrott and the Axe
wandered sluggishly to the sea, presented an almost similar
aspect. In Kent and Sussex the well-known Romney Marsh,
a hundred square miles of green flat, intersected by dykes of
stagnant water, had been gradually abandoned by the sea, and
" inned " by successive embankments of Roman or Saxon times.
Here the marshmen of the seventeenth century, like those of the
1 History of ImbanHng and Draining, by Sir William Dugdale, 1652, p. 171
of edition of 1772. " Hassocks " seems to have been a fen word for the upper-
most tufts of grass, which had to be removed before the land could be cultivated.
A distinguished traveller through the Fens in 1833 notices the perpetual smell of
burning dried " wreck " and weeds (Memoirs of Dr. Thomas Chalmers, by W.
Hanna, 1851, vol. ii. p. 411). A more disagreeable stench constantly pervaded
the Fenland. " Upon the walls of the ordinary people's houses," noticed a
lady in 1695, " the cowdung [is] plastered up to dry in cakes, which they use
for firing ; 'tis a very offensive fuel, but the common people use little else "
(Through England on a Side Saddle in the Reign of William and Mary . . .
Diary of Celia Fiennes, edited by Hon. Mrs. Griffiths, 1888, p. 132). " The
natives dry the cowdung for firing in the winter, so 'tis kept in heaps about
the fields, as is also the dung of their yards, so when you walk the stink is
inconceivable " (Mrs. Harris to her son, afterwards Lord Malmesbury, 19th June
1763 ; in A Series of Letters of the First Earl of Malmesbury, 1870, vol. i. p. 91).
Of Louth (Lincolnshire) in 1795, it was said (in The, Stale of the Poor, by Sir
F. M. Eden, vol. ii. p. 394) "it is hoped that the introduction of coal will
induce the inhabitants to desist from their ancient practice, not yet entirely
disused, of using the dung of their cattle for fuel." The custom, which is, of
course, common throughout most of Asia, still existed in 1830, though such a
fuel had, it was admitted, " a strong disagreeable smell in burning " (History of
the Drainage of the Great Level of the Fens, by Samuel Wells, 1830, vol. i. p. 790).
Even for the rich the life of the Fens had many drawbacks. " All the
summer long," writes a traveller about 1690, " there are continually such
swarms of stinging gnats and other troublesome flies throughout all these
quarters that a stranger can find but a very unhospitable lodging and recep-
tion " (Three Years' Travels in England, Scotland and Wales, by Rev. James
Brome, 1700, p. 143). Here is a description of Cottenham in Cambridgeshire,
in the leafy June of 1763 : " The country about here is the most disagreeable
I ever saw. . . . The parsonage ... is surrounded by fens, and you are teased
be3^ond expression by the gnats. When we got here, about nine on Saturday,
the Dean's butler came to your father with a pair of leathern stockings to
draw on so as to protect his legs, which in hot weather is dreadful. Besides
this the beds have a machine covered with a silk net which lets down after
you are in bed and covers you all over. AVithout this, there could be no sleep-
ing ; for notwithstanding all these precautions we were most miserably stung.
There are fourteen hundred cows kept in the parish of Cottenham, which feed
on the fens in the summer. The water is in this dry season up to their bellies.
. . . Mr. Harris took a ride to survey these fens, and he says nothing can be
so detestable. He talked with the natives, who told him that, during the
winter, the water was constantly above their ankles in their houses " (A Series
of Letters of the First Earl of Malmesbury, 1870, vol. i. p. 91).
1 6 THE COURT OF SEWERS
Middle Ages, found their very existence dependent on their
watchful maintenance of the great wall, fourteen miles long, that
protected their sheep and their homesteads from the winter
storms. The whole estuary of the Thames, from the Mole to the
Medway, from Millbank in Westminster to the Maplin Sands, had
its broad marsh lands, habitable only by the maintenance of
interminable stretches of river wall and the construction of in-
numerable dykes and sluices, many of them of unknown antiquity.
In the interior of England nearly every county had its hundreds
or its thousands of acres of " moss " or swamp, along the valley
bottoms or on the boggy uplands. To render these acres serviceable
involved the construction and maintenance of miles of " ditches,
gutters, gates and sewers." 1 Moreover, at many points along
the low-lying coasts, there went on a perpetual struggle between
" the power of man's hand " and " the swallowing and devouring
surges of the seas and waters." The salt marsh, gradually un-
covered by a receding sea, had to be protected against storms
and exceptional tides. Elsewhere, fields and homesteads — even
nourishing ports like Dunwich and Ravenspur — had to be de-
fended, sometimes in vain, against the advancing ocean. The
" great fresh rivers and streams " Callis tells us, 2 had also to have
" their passages made clear and that their walls, banks and other
defences be repaired, kept and maintained, whereby the fair,
delightful, pleasant, and fruitful meadows and pasture grounds
which lie in the greatest abundance' upon or near the rivers,
brooks and streams, may be preserved from the inundation of fresh
waters, which many times annoy them."
The bulk of this work of reclamation, from the time when
most of England formed practically one continuous forest and
swamp and moorland moss, down to the Enclosure Acts of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was doubtless the result of
individual enterprise, great or small. Here the great lord em-
banked from the floods the meadows at the foot of his castle ;
there the toiling cottager laboriously built up his plot of garden-
ground against the marsh. But when each man had raised his
bank, or buill the bit of river wall that protected his own land,
he was often still liable to be flooded out by a high tide or a spring
Ere het, owing to the neglect of his neighbour to keep the bank
1 lV, Benry VIII. c. 5 (1632).
Tli, Hauling of . . . Robert CaUis upon the Statute of Si i-. n, I
THE ORIGIN OF THE COURT OF SEWERS 17
in repair, or to the want of uniformity in their defences against
the common enemy. A small breach at any one point might,
any winter, flood not the land of the negligent owner alone but
the whole of the neighbouring lowlands. Individual enterprise
brought, moreover, its own additions to the perils of the waters in
the multitude of " fishgarths, milldams, locks, hebbing wears,
hecks, floodgates and other like annoyances," which served as
hindrances " to navigation, or stops whereby the abundant waters
cannot have their free passage to the sea." * To cope with these
difficulties we see, first the primitive forms of communal co-
operation for land drainage — as yet scarcely investigated and
deserving further study — and then, as these were found lacking in
authority, amid the growing centralisation of the judicial power,
the establishment of Courts of Sewers, wielding the might of the
King.
The Origin of the Court of Sewers
We know nothing of the collective regulation of the sewers
and banks of British, Roman, Anglo-Saxon or Norman times.
From the provision in Magna Carta 2 forbidding assessments to
maintain embankments except where customary, we may infer
the existence, and even the increase, of some local organisation
of such services . In thirteenth - and fourteenth-century documents
we get glimpses, as for instance in the marshes of Kent and
Sussex, of an interesting form of local self-government, sometimes
avowedly based on the agreement of those concerned, sometimes
asserting a compulsory authority exercised " time out of mind."
Thus, in 1250, as we learn from a contemporary document, it could
be asserted that it had, from time immemorial, been the custom in
Romney Marsh for the Twenty-Four Jurats, chosen by the land-
owners of the marsh, to watch over the sea wall and watercourses,
compelling each owner to maintain in repair a certain length of
wall and of " watergangs." These Jurats had a Bailiff, who
summoned their meetings and enforced, by distraint on recal-
citrant owners, the payment of damages assessed by the Jurats
for any neglect of duty. There seem to have been also one or
more collectors and an " Expenditor," in case the owners pre-
ferred, in any particular work, to have the repairs executed as a
1 23 Henry VIII. c. 5 (1532).
2 Sec. 23 ; see Stubbs' Select Charters, p. 300.
C
18 THE COURT OF SEWERS
collective service out of a primitive " acre rate." But these
ancient local distraints and assessments were sometimes resisted
by powerful landowners. At Romney this resistance went so
far that " the walls and watergangs lay waste and ruinated, by
reason whereof the inundations of the sea and other waters over-
flow a great part thereof, to the great detriment of our Lord the
King and the men of the same Marsh." Whereupon the King
gave a special charter to the Four and Twenty " Lawful Men,"
forbidding the Sheriff of the County to interfere with their dis-
traints. When this proved inefficacious, six years later, he sent
down Sir Henry de Bathe, one of the principal judges, to determine
the differences and record the customs of Romney Marsh. For
the next two hundred years we read, in the pages of Dugdale, of
a succession of visits of specially commissioned King's Justices,
to adjudicate, with the aid of a Jury of indifferent men, summoned
by the Sheriff of the County, in disputes between the Twenty-
Four Jurats of the Marsh on the one hand, attended by their
Bailiff, Expenditor, collectors and the commonalty, and this or
that powerful landowner having fields within the Marsh, who had
defied their ordinances and assessments. 1 The same kind of
local organisation for the protection and drainage of land was
imitated in other marshes in Kent and Sussex, where previously
there had been " no certain law of the said marsh ordained or used
before that time, but at the will of those lords who had lands
within the same " ; and " wherein the Marsh Law " was hence-
forth to be " established and used." 2 Much the same organisa-
tion seems also to have existed in some other marshy districts,
notably, as we shall describe, in Somersetshire, and along the
banks of the Thames ; and to have persisted, in spite of the im-
position of a newer constitution, down to the nineteenth century,
possibly even to the present day.
Meanwhile, in all the low-lying parts of England, the need for
some organisation of the works of embanking and land drainage
had led monarch after monarch, on the emergency of some flood
or inroad of the sea, or because of the importunity of some
particular suitor, to issue temporary Commissions, appointing
1 History >>f Imbanking and Draining, by Sir William Dugdale, L652, pp.
16-35 of edition of 1772; History of Romney Mars/,, by W. Kolloway, L840;
The Cinque Ports, by Montagu Burrows, 1889; 'J' In Muimr am! the Borough,
byS. and B. Webb, 1908, voL L pp. 372-380.
2 History of Imbanking and Draining, by Sir William Dugdale, pp. 25, 95.
'•JUSTICES OF SEWERS" 19
Justices to survey and enquire, by Juries, into the needs of
different districts ; to discover what particular persons were
liable, according to ancient custom, to execute repairs or to con-
tribute to the common charges ; and to settle the innumerable
disputes that arose. We are not concerned to unravel, from the
archives themselves or from the involved account given by
Dugdale, all the complications and diversities of these casual
judicial authorities — sometimes the King's Assize Judges,
listening to the presentments of the ordinary Hundred Juries,
and trying indictments on traverse by the common Petty
Juries ; sometimes special " Justices of Sewers," issuing precepts
to the Sheriff to call " Juries of Sewers," composed of indifferent
persons, who found particular landowners liable for works of
repair ; sometimes, again, standing Sewers Juries, like the Twenty-
Four sworn men of Romney Marsh ; apparently permanent
bodies of representatives of the local owners whose presentments
to the King's Justices, if traversed, were tried before a Jury of
indifferent persons summoned by the Sheriff. These local
organisations and customs, spasmodically interfered with and
controlled by casual Justices depending only on the fiat of the
King, with their uncertainties of law and diversities of procedure,
were partly fortified and partly superseded by a series of Parlia-
mentary enactments * culminating in the celebrated Statute of
Sewers of 1532, which definitely established the authority of the
King's Commissions of Sewers, and of the Courts of Sewers held
by them ; and formulated " for all parts within this Realm," a
fixed constitution and procedure for what now became practically
permanent local governing bodies. 2
1 6 Henry VI. c. 5 (1427) ; 8 Henry VI. c. 3 (1429) ; 18 Henry VI. c. 10
(1439) ; 23 Henry VI. c. 9 (1499) ; 12 Edward IV. c. 6 (1472) ; 4 Henry VII.
c. 1 (1488) ; 6 Henry VIII. c. 10 (1514). The Public Record Office contains
masses of records relating to the proceedings of these Courts of Sewers in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. See Public Works in Mediaeval
Law, by C. T. Flower (Selden Society, 1915), p. xxvii ; and the fuller
" Note on the Constitution and Records of Commissions of Sewers," by H. G.
Richardson, in Report of Royal Commission on Public Records, vol. ii. part
ii. pp. 98-100.
2 23 Henry VIII. c. 5 (1532). It is needless to remind the student that the
King's right to issue a Commission of Sewers in no way depended on these
statutes. The very learned Nouvelle Nature Brevium of Sir Anthony Fitz-
herbert, in editions from 1534 to 1794, is authority for the issue of writs to
Justices of Sewers, irrespective of statute law, touching " sea-walls, ditches,
gutters, sewers, arches, banks, wears and trenches " (Local Self -Government, by
J. Toulmin Smith, 1851, p. 342). The records show that "the King in
2o THE COURT OF SEWERS
The Legal Framework of the Court of Sewers
Under the great Statute of Sewers of 1532, as slightly amended
in subsequent years, 1 the body of persons to whom the King
issued his Commission to govern the sewers of a particular
district resembled in many respects the Justices of the Peace of
the county. Like the Justices of the Peace, the Commissioners
of Sewers had, unless they were barristers, to possess a qualifica-
tion in freehold land, 2 though provision was made from the first
for allowing Commissioners free of any corporate Borough to
qualify merely by the possession of personalty. They had, like
the Justices of the Peace, to take elaborate oaths, under a similar
Chancery issued a continuous series of Commissions of Inquiry during the
three centuries preceding the Statute of 23 Henry VIII., which created a
machinery which soon led to a quasi-permanent Commission of Sewers "
{Public Works in Mediaeval Law, by C. T. Flower (Selden Society, 1915), p.
xxvii). " The Kings of England " granted Commissions of Sewers " for the
.surveying and repairing sea banks, walls, etc., long before any statute was
enacted in Parliament for it " {The Law of Sewers, 1732). " All statutes of
sewers," had said a lawyer, lecturing in 1638, " are made in aid of the ancient
prerogative of the King " {The Learned Heading of John Heme . . . concerning
Commissioners of Sewers, 1659). It may be added that the Bishop of Durham
issued a Commission of Sewers in 1353, on his own authority {History and An-
tiquities of the Parish of Heiningbrough, Yorkshire, 1886) ; and the Bishop of
Ely, though never actually in a position of so much independence, issued many
such Commissions (MS. records of Ely diocese ; see 12th Report of Historical
MSS. Commission for 1889 (Appendix, part ix.) ; Ely Episcopal Records, 1891).
The palatine earls and other potentates exercising quasi -royal authority within
their respective territories, apparently did the same. "The interest of the Duchy
of Lancaster in the Fens on account of the Soke of Bolingbroke was so great
that in 1549 an elaborate code of Fen laws was drawn up at a Duchy Court,
and was maintained from time to time until the later systematic enclosure of
the Fens " {Public Works in Mediaeval Law, by C. T. Flower, Selden Society,
1915, p. 282 ; see also infra, p. 55). The Duchy of Lancaster issued a
Commission of its own to the Westminster Commissioners of Sewers, so as to
enable them to exercise jurisdiction over the Precinct of the Savoy (Report
of House of Commons Committee on Sewers in the Metropolis, 1823, p. 38).
Many others are among the Duchy records in the Public Record Office, for
marshlands on the Duchy's estates in different parts of the country. See
The Parish and the County, book ii. chap. i. Appendix, " On some Anomalous
County Jurisdictions, including the Counties Palatine," pp. 310-318.
1 25 Henry VIII. c. 10 (1534) ; 3 & 4 Edward VI. c. 8 (1549) ; 13 Elizabeth,
0. 9 (1571); 7 Anno, c. 10 (1709); House of Lords Journals, 25th March.
8th and 11th April, 1709. The " Laws and Ordinances of the Sewers," 1602-
1831, among the Chancery Petty Bap records, in the Public Record Office,
relating chiefly to the Bedford Level, deserve to be further studied.
2 Of "40 marks " annual value. By 13 Eliz. c. 9 (1571) the qualification
(for farmers) is stated as " forty pounds sterling." By 3 & 4 William IV. 0. 22
(1833) it was raised to £100 a year freehold, or £200 a year leasehold, within
the county. Unlike the Justice of tin- Peace, the Commissioner <>f Severs had
expressly to be " resident within the county " (25 Henry VIII. c. 10, 1534).
LEGAL FRAMEWORK OF THE COURT OF SEWERS 21
" dedimus potestatem." Each Commission, too, specified some
of them as being what was termed " of the quorum." 1 They
had allowed to them, like the Justices, their four shillings a day,
with two shillings for their Clerk. More significant to the
constitutional student is the fact that, like the Justices of the
Peace, they combined in themselves, judicial, executive and
even legislative powers, 2 all exercised under the forms of a Court
of justice. On the other hand, the authority of the Commis-
sioners of Sewers, unlike that of the Justices of the Peace, was
limited alike in time and in extent. In both cases the Com-
mission came automatically to an end on the demise of the
Crown, and might be earlier terminated by writ of supersedeas.
But each Commission of Sewers purported to be a strictly
temporary one, enduring at first only for three years in each
case, though this term was afterwards made ten years. 3 And
their jurisdiction was at all times confined to matters concerning
land drainage and embankments, or, as the statute expresses it,
to the " walls, streams, ditches, banks, gutters, sewers, gates,
calcies, bridges, trenches, mills, mill-dams, floodgates, ponds,
locks, hebbingwears, and other impediments, lets and annoy-
ances ... in the rivers, streams and other floods " 4 within
the denned area. Thus the Courts of Sewers differed funda-
mentally from the Parish, the County, the Lord's Court or the
Municipal Corporation that we have described in the preceding
1 See The Parish and the County, pp. 302-303.
2 Digest of the Statutes relating to the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers,
1847, p. 76. The oath that continued to the last to be administered in the
Metropolis distinctly expresses the legislative as well as the judicial function.
" Ye shall swear that you to your cunning, wit and power shall truly and
indifferently execute the authority to you given by this Commission of Sewers,
without any favor, affection, corruption, dread or malice, to be borne to any
kind or manner of persons ; and as the case shall require, ye shall consent
and endeavour yourself, for your part, to the best of your knowledge and
power, to the making of such wholesome, just, equal and indifferent laws and
ordinances as shall be made and devised by the most discreet and indifferent
of your fellows, being in commission with you, for the due redress, reformation
and amendment of all and every such things as are contained and specified in
the said commission ; and the same laws and ordinances, to your cunning wit
and power, cause to be put in due execution, without favor, meed, dread,
malice or affection, as God you help and all saints " (23 Henry VIII. c. 5, 1532 ;
Report of House of Commons Committee on Sewers in the Metropolis, 1823,
p. 4).
3 13 Eliz. c. 9 (1571). A minor point of difference was that the quorum of
the Sewer Commissioness was fixed by statute at six, three of whom had to be
among those named in the Commission as of the quorum.
4 23 Henry VIII. c. 23 (1532).
22 THE COURT OF SEWERS
volumes, all of which dealt generally with all the affairs of their
particular localities. The Courts of Sewers belonged essentially
to the class of " ad hoc " bodies, created for some special function,
which became, as we shall see, a characteristic feature of the
local government of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
The Commissioners or " Justices " of Sewers were empowered
to hold, when and where they chose, within the area prescribed
by their Commission, the so-called Court of Sewers ; x a Court
of Record, to which the Sheriff was required on their precept to
return Juries of " honest and lawful " men. This Court deter-
mined, by the verdict of the Jury, both the obligations of par-
ticular persons to do or abstain from doing certain things, and
the extent to which they had failed to fulfil such obligations.
If the offence was wilful, and done " vi et armis," it was punish-
able by fine or imprisonment at the Commissioners' discretion. 2
Mere neglect or default in any person, under obligation " by
frontage, tenure, custom or covenant," or merely by ownership
of the bank, to maintain any work, led to his amercement by
the Jury in the amount of the damage. Upon this verdict
the Commissioners gave judgment, which they enforced
through their own officers by distraint. Any fines that they
imposed as punishments were " estreated " into the Court of
Exchequer, there to be enforced by the Sheriff as debts due
to the Crown.
The Commissioners of Sewers were, however, more than a
judicial authority. They were authorised and required by their
Commission, as well as by the statutes, 3 " to survey the said
walls, streams, ditches, banks, gutters, sewers, gates, calcies,
bridges, trenches, mills, milldams, floodgates, ponds, locks,
hebbing wears and other impediments, lets and aimoyances " ;
to cause them "to be made, corrected, repaired, amended,
put down or reformed as the case shall require," according to
their own " wisdoms and discretions " ; to appoint their own
' Keepers, Bailiffs, Surveyors, Collectors, Expenditors and
other ministers and officers " ; to impress into their service as
many " carts, horses, oxen, beasts and other instruments," and
1 Th Beading of . . . Robert CaUis, etc., pp. 196-198 of edition of 1824
2 It sh'Mild be said that we <1<> aol find Courts of Seven in tin- eighteenth
eenl uiy act ually imprisoning any one ; though they would occasionally t hieaten
to do so for contempt of court.
3 -2:'. 11. i,ry VIII. c. 5(1632).
AUTHORITY OF THE COURT OF SEWERS 23
also as many "workmen and labourers" as they deemed necessary;
and to appropriate compulsorily as much " timber and other
necessaries " as they required. For, beyond the usual works
of maintenance, if the violence of waters was exceptionally
great," says the learned Callis, " either by breaking in of the
sea in an extraordinary manner, or by a sudden flood or in-
undation of fresh waters after rain ... no man is amerciable
therefor." 1 In that case, the Jury had to apportion the esti-
mated cost of the work among all those whose lands benefited.
Meanwhile the Commissioners, as a merely administrative body,
were empowered to execute " according to their wisdoms and
discretions " the needful works.
The authority of the Commissioners had even its legislative
side. They were expressly empowered " to make and ordain
statutes, ordinances and provisions from time to time, as the
case shall require, for the safeguard, conservation, redress,
correction and reformation of the premises," either " after the
1 The Reading of . . . Robert Callis, p. 211 of 1824 edition. It was always
a matter of doubt whether the Courts of Sewers could, even on presentment
of a Jury, in the greatest emergency, decide to construct an entirely new work,
by a rate upon the owners of the land benefited. Sir Edward Coke decided, in
the great case concerning the Isle of Ely, that no such power to rate for new
works was given by the Commission. Callis, on the other hand, argued that
in reason they must have such a power, and that the Statute of Sewers might
be interpreted as implying it, the terms " to make new " being extended to
" new making," as well as to renewing, the defences (p. 119). This view had,
in fact, been held by Chief Justice Popham, and was implicitly taken by the
Privy Council in 1615, when it refused to restrain certain Commissioners of
Sewers who had made new banks, drains and sluices about the Isle of Ely.
(The order is given in full in The Law of Sewers, 1726, pp. 36-41.) As a matter
of fact, the Commissioners (except under special statutes) usually restricted
themselves to what could, by a wide interpretation, be deemed the renewal of
old works, unless they secured the unanimous consent of the owners rated.
Even in Westminster in 1832 and 1845, Sewers Rates were levied only " for
upholding, maintaining and improving existing lines of sewers " — not for
building new lines of sewers, and eminent counsel advised that " the general
powers do not extend to making new sewers " (Substance of an Opinion delivered
at a Court of Seivers for the City and Liberty of Westminster, by T. L. Donaldson,
1835, pp. 12-13 ; House of Commons Return No. 686 of 1847, p. 19). On the
other hand, the Tower Hamlets Commissioners held, in 1834, that they had
power under the Statute of Sewers to make entirely new sewers by a special
district rate — a claim which was upheld in the Court of Chancery in a case
in 1822 (Report and Evidence of Select Committee on Metropolitan Sewers,
1834, p. 65 of Appendix D ; see also The Law of Land Drainage and Sewers,
by G. G. Kennedy and J. S. Saunders, 1884, p. 60). Explicit authority to make
new works was given in the Sewers Act of 1833 (3 & 4 William IV. c. 22, sec. 19),
subject to the consent of the owners and occupiers of three-fourths in value
of the lands to be charged ; but this statute was made not to apply to the
Middlesex Commissions (sec. 61) which Parliament did not trust.
24 THE COURT OF SEWERS
laws and customs of Romney Marsh," x or " otherwise by any
ways and means " according to their own " wisdoms and dis-
cretions." The Commissioners were expressly empowered to
compel obedience to their commands and regulations, either " by
distress, fines and amerciaments " or by such other " punish-
ments, ways and means " as seemed expedient to them. Finally,
by a remarkable provision, the " laws and ordinances " so made
by the Commissioners, which would otherwise have expired on
the termination of their authority, might be made permanently
binding on all men, by being " ingrossed on parchment and
certified under the seals of the said Commissioners into the
King's Court of Chancery, and then the King's Royal Assent
be had to the same." 2 Forty years later this peculiar use of
the Royal Assent was dispensed with, and the " laws, ordinances
and constitutions " of the Commissioners, on the mere authority
of the seals of any six of them, were made permanently binding
(until expressly abrogated by other Commissioners) even after
the term of the Commission had expired, or had been summarily
brought to an end by writ of supersedeas. 3 Truly, the Parlia-
ments of Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth weighed out powers
to the King's Commissioners with no niggard hand ! 4
Thus, the Court of Sewers was, in structure and formal
procedure, closely analogous to the Court of Quarter Sessions
in its dealings with such matters of civil administration as the
county bridges. But in the " laws and customs of Romney
Marsh," to which the great Statute of Sewers makes pointed
reference, there survived, as the student will have noticed, in the
1 The Laws and Customs of Romney Marsh, thus made the authoritative
model for all Commissioners of Sewers, were accordingly many times reprinted,
often as an appendix to anv legal treatise on the law of sewers.
2 23 Henry VI II. c. 5 (1532).
3 13 Eliz. c. 9 (1571).
4 Throughout all their proceedings the somewhat mysterious powers of the
Commissioners of Sewers added to their authority. As a Court of Record,
they could fine and imprison without limit. Any kind of " contempt " of
their authority, any disobedience of their decrees, and even any rlifwiiading
"persons assessed" not to pay the rate or obey the law, was summarily
punishable. They could issue their own distress warrants, and their offi©
could then upon distrain for all fines or amerciaments due (including Sewers
Rates). They could appoint any local resident as one of their subordinate
officers, and enforce service by tines. They could fine their own officers for
breach of duty. When they abandoned the acre rate for a rate in the pound,
they could make their own valuation and assessment of property, though in
practiee they latterly accepted that of tho Poor Rate {The Local Taxes of the
United Kingdom, by Danby P. Pry, 1846).
JURIES OF THE COURT OF SEWERS 25
Four and Twenty Jurats representing the landowners of the
Marsh, something very like the " Gentlemen of the Four and
Twenty," who governed the little community of Braintree in
Essex, or a typical Northumberland parish. 1 Moreover, the
Court of Sewers had a good deal of the spirit which animated the
Court Leet. To the eminent Justice who in 1258 enquired into
the customs of Romney Marsh, local government meant primarily,
not the collective administration of services by a select body,
but the decisions of a judicial Court, empowered to compel each
man to abstain from committing nuisances and to fulfil his
own particular obligations to the community. With this com-
mingling of ideas, it is not unnatural that we should find it
difficult to discover what exactly was the sphere and function of
the Jury in the Court of Sewers. In the course of our preceding
volumes we have described (apart from the procedure in civil
suits between parties) four different types of Jury. The Court/-/
Leet Jury was a Jury of neighbours, who acted on their own
view and knowledge, and who presented offenders, found them
guilty and declared their amercements. The members of the
Hundred Jury, on the other hand, as they appeared at the Court '
of Quarter Sessions, acting on their own view and knowledge,
only determined facts and presented offenders. The Grand Jury /
at Quarter Sessions or at the Assizes did no more, but its members
combined with their own view and knowledge the advantage of
hearing witnesses in support of the complaint. The present- /
ments of the Grand Jury were, equally with those of the Hundred
Jury, 2 of no effect or avail unless they were, at somebody's risk
and expense, formulated into definite indictments, which could
be " traversed " by the defendants. Finally we have the
Traverse Jury (or " Felon's Jury " or simply " Petty Jury "),
composed, not of neighbours, but of indifferent persons from the
body of the County ; acting, not on their own view and know-
1 See The Parish and the County, 1907, book i. chap. v. pp. 173-246 ; The
Manor and the Borough, 1908, pp. 156, 172, etc. " It is abundantly clear that,
at least in a considerable number of districts, Commissioners found the local
community already organised for the purpose of defending the marshland ; in
some districts the Commissioners set up a form of local administration on the
lines of that already existing in other places ; in either case it was upon the
local community that the continuous duty, year in year out, of protecting and
draining the marshes devolved." (" Note on the Constitution and Records of
Commissions of Sewers," by H. A. Richardson, in Report of Royal Com-
mission on Public Records, vol. ii. part ii. pp. 98-100.)
2 And, we maj r add, those of the Coroner's Jury.
26 THE COURT OF SEWERS
ledge, but exclusively on the evidence produced in Court ; not
presenting offenders or otherwise initiating any proceedings, but
confining themselves strictly to the trial of an issue placed before
them ; and finding only a verdict of fact, without presuming to
assess the punishment or pronounce the sentence. To which of
these types did the Jury of the Court of Sewers legally belong ?
We might imagine from the words of the Statute of Sewers that
the Jury was one of indifferent persons, to be summoned by the
Sheriff of the County for each case, or at any rate for each session
of the Court ; whose duty was to confine themselves, like the
members of the Traverse Jury, to returning a verdict of fact, on
the evidence produced before them. Yet the Jury which formed
part of the Court of Sewers had also, it seems clear, the duty of pre-
senting offenders and initiating proceedings ; and had, moreover,
to find, not only the individuals " through whose default the said
hurts and damages have happened " ; but also " who hath or
holdeth any land or tenements or common of pasture or profit
of fishing, or hath or may have any hurt, loss or disadvantage
by any manner of means in the said places " ; a duty which
could best be discharged by such a standing committee of
resident neighbours as we know to have existed in Romney
Marsh, and as we find, in fact, continuing, under the name and
style of the Jury, in connection with some Courts of Sewers.
Whether the presentments of such a standing Sewers Jury were,
like those of the Grand Jury and Hundred Juries at the Court
of Quarter Sessions, legally liable to be traversed by the person
presented, 1 and whether such person could, in that event, claim
to " put himself on his country," and have the issue tried by a
Traverse Jury of indifferent persons chosen from the body of
the County — whether, on the contrary, the Sewers Jury, like
the Court Leet Jury, had ever been legally empowered (to use
the words of the Bedford Level Act of 1663) " to inquire of,
present and try " 2 — that is, discover the default, present the
1 In (he nineteenth century the Jury of Sowers was bo desoribed by Lawyers,
admittedly in contradiction of the practice. Its presentment, said the Clerk
to the Tower Samlets Courl in 1823, " may be traversed and in that case we
iii ii—l issue a new precept t<> t lie Sheriff to impani 1 twenty-four persons from
the body of the County." Bui it was admitted that, in all the centuries of
experience of the Tower Samlets Court, there had never been a traverse ; nor
within living memory, at any rate, in that of Holborn and Finsbury (Report
of Ifouso of Commons < 'ommittee on Sewers in the Mel ropolis, 1823, pp. 9, 15).
2 ISChas. 11. c. 13, Beo, 5.
THE CORPORATION OF THE BEDFORD LEVEL 27
offender, find him guilty and assess the fine, as certainly often
happened — remains to us, after much study of Callis and other
authorities, in comparison with what we know to have been the
practice, more than ever doubtful. 1
The Corporation of the Bedford Level
We shall presently describe the evolution, between 1689 and
1835, of the local authorities formed under the statutes and Com-
missions of Sewers. We may believe that the extensive powers
and authorities wielded by them during the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries sufficed to provide the local government necessary
for the maintenance of the numerous embankments and walls,
sewers and dykes that had already been constructed in the low-
lying lands of Surrey and Kent, Middlesex and Essex, Somerset-
shire and Gloucestershire and generally along many of the sea-
coasts of the kingdom. But the great district of the Fenland 2
1 On one occasion Lord Ellenborough reprobated the practice of Courts of
Sewers having a standing Jury (Dore v. Gray, 2 T.R. ; Report of House of
Commons Committee on Sewers in the Metropolis, 1823, p. 9) ; see report of
a meeting of the Tower Hamlets Court of Sewers in 1828, where a ratepayer
argued the point, Times, 16th February 1828. The changes in practice in the
East Kent Court of Sewers are instructive on this point. It was held in a
Somersetshire case that a presentment by a standing Jury, consisting of local
landowners, and serving normally for life, was not valid, though such a Jury
was according to ancient custom in that Court of Sewers. The presentment
was held to be so far void as even not to be properly traversable, the traverse,
being tried by a Jury of indifferent persons. It was held that the presenting
Jury must itself hear evidence in court (R. v. Commissioners of Sewers for
Somerset, in Reports of Cases, etc., by Sir E. H. East, vol. vii. p. 71). This case
of 1823 evidently caused much perturbation, and upset old customs. The
Sewers Act of 1833 (3 & 4 William IV. c. 22, sec. 11) decided the matter by
prescribing elaborately (sec. 11) that the Jury of the Court of Sewers should be
empanelled by the Sheriff from " substantial and indifferent persons . . .
qualified and usually summoned to serve on Grand Juries," who were, like the
Grand Jury, to hear witnesses, and to invite complaints by public notice ;
upon which they were to make their presentments, which could (as is clear
from sec. 46) be traversed, when the issue had presumably to be tried by a
Traverse Jury. But even then the Act carefully preserved the right of
Courts of Sewers to continue any " ancient custom or usage " in the way of
enquiry and presentment by Jury (sec. 17).
The different kinds of Juries deserve further examination by historians.
See the many references in The Parish and the County, 1907, index, pp. 625-627 ;
and The Manor and the Borough, 1908, index, pp. 803-805.
2 For the strangely interesting life and history of the Fenland, see (in
addition to the works cited at p. 13) The Fenland Past and Present, by S. H.
Miller and S. B. Skertchley, 1878, and Fenland Notes and Queries, from 1889
onward. We append a list of the principal books containing information on
the subject. For mediaeval times, see Victoria County History of Lincolnshire,
28 THE COURT OF SEWERS
presented a different problem. This area of thirteen hundred
square miles, the largest plain of Britain, extending from Lincoln
on the North to Newmarket on the South, from Stamford on the
West to King's Lynn on the East, and comprising a great part of
the Counties of Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire,
Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire, was, at the end of the
sixteenth century, probably at its worst. To the enterprising
statesmen of Elizabeth and James the First it seemed intolerable
that so large a portion of the kingdom should remain little more
than " vast spreadings of water " ; forming, during three-
quarters of each year, an almost continuous level of " drowned
lands," infested with malarious vapours and clouds of insects ;
good for nothing but fish and wildfowl ; its half - submerged
islets and bordering lands inhabited by an enfeebled and
brutalised amphibious race of " breedlings " or " fen slodgers " ;
vol. ii., article on " Social and Economic History," by W. 0. Massingbird, and
the authorities there cited, especially Court Rolls of the Manor of Ingoldmells,
1902, and History of the Parish of Ormsby, by W. 0. Massingbird, 1899. For the
seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see History of the Great Level
of the Fens, by Sir Jonas Moore, 1685 ? History of the Ancient and Present State
of the Navigation of King's Lynn, by T. Badeslade, 1725 ; An Essay on Drain-
age, more particularly with regard to the North Division of the . . . Bedford Level,
1729 ; Reasons offered to the Proprietors . . . in the North Level against . . .
any New Tax, by G. Maxwell, 1788 (and over a hundred other pamphlets in
B.M. vols. 8775 bb. 1, 816 m. 8, 725 g. 34, etc.) ; An Historical Account of
the Great Level of the Fens, by William Elstobb, 1793 ; General View of the
Agriculture of the County of Hunts, by George'Maxwell, 1793 ; A Collection of
Laws . . . of the Bedford Level Corporation, by C. N. Cole, 1761 and 1803 ;
Historical Account of the Ancient Town of Wisbech, by W. Watson, 1827, pp.
1-84 ; History of the Drainage of the Great Level of the Fens called Bedford Level,
by Samuel Wells, 1828-1830; Regulationa and Orders . . . of the Bedford i
Corporation, by Samuel Wells, 1840 ; Sir J. Rennie's address to the Institute
of < 'i\ il Engineers, in its Proceedings, 1846, vol. v. pp. 43-50 ; papers by R. B.
Grantham in the same, 1860, vol. xix. pp. 65-75, 91-98 ; Fen Sketches, by J. A.
Clarke, 1852 ; "The Fens," in Prose Idylls, by Rev. C. Kingsley, 1873 ; Bt mi-
niscences of Fen and Mere, by J. M. Heathcote, 1876 ; Fenland, by L. Gibbs,
1888 ; The Story of a Great Agricultural Estate, by the Puke of Bedford, 1897.
The Ely Cathedral Library appears to contain 60 works on the Fenland between
1745 and 1810 (see list in Fenland Notes and Queries, vol. iii. pp. 28-29). In
the realm of fiction, see Hereward the Wake, by Rev. C. Kin-sir. v. 1866 : Dick
o' the Fens, by G. M. Fenn, 1888 ; Cheap Jack- Zita, by S. Baring-Gould, 1893 j
A Daughter of the Fen, by J. T. Bealby, 1893; The Camp of Refuge, by
C. Macfarlano, edited by G. L. Gommc, 1897 ; and The JUS. in a Red Box,
anon., I9i»3.
The Public Record Office has a volume of "Laws and Ordinances of the
S.'wrrs." 1602-1831. among the Chancery Petty Bag Records; a Beri
•• Bedford Level Decrees," 1663 1683, and' other records relating to the Fen-
land; and the P^ly MS. archives contain many more {Fly Diocesan Records,
1891).
THE "ADVENTURERS" 29
half fishermen and fowlers and half " commoners," keeping
geese and cutting reeds in the " summerlands " of the fen.
Tradition had it that in past centuries the Fenland had been
forest and meadow, defended against the waters by the skill and
industry of the religious houses, to whom much of it had be-
longed. 1 It was plain that neglect of the old works of drainage,
and the silting up of the river estuaries, were at least partly
responsible for the evil state to which the district had been
reduced. Yet experience showed that all the powers of Com-
missioners of Sewers, of whom the area had had many, were in-
adequate to the task of reclamation. Meanwhile, the example
of the Dutch Netherlands, where an even greater area had been
won from the waters, inspired the statesmen of the time to new
expedients. It was an age of " adventurers," encouraged by
monopolies and grants. Under the patronage, first of King
James and then of King Charles, successive bodies of " under-
takers " were authorised to attempt the reclamation of the
" surrounded " or " drowned " lands of the Fens, and were
stimulated by the grant in fee simple of a large share of them.
Over these enterprises we see the King, the local Commissioners
of Sewers, the Lords of Manors and the commoners becoming
involved, during the first half of the seventeenth century, in a
complicated tangle of bargains and agreements concerning princi-
pally the central " Great Level " of the Fens, concluded with
different groups of undertakers, whose successive engineering
failures, interspersed with rebellions of the Fenmen, 2 the breaking
1 It seems clear that the monks had been famous embankers and drainers ;
see Ely Diocesan Records, 1891 ; The Ramsey Cartulary (Rolls Series), 1884—1893 ;
and Economic Conditions of the Manors of Ramsey Abbey, by N. Neilson, 1899.
" There is a tradition that this district [the Great Level of the Fens] was
overflown by the sea in the year a.d. 368, and it is beyond doubt that constant
effort was needed and is still needed to keep back the incursions of the sea
and to prevent the district from becoming waterlogged in winter and insanitary
in summer. With this object the Romans built great dykes, such as Carsdyke
and Fossedyke ; and actuated as they always were to plant their settlements
where abundance of hard work would purify the celibate life, the religious
orders made the low-lying parts of Lincolnshire their special province.
Bardney, Barlings, Spalding, Kirkstead, Torksey, Crowland, Semperingham,
and many other abbeys and priories continued the work of draining this
difficult district " (Public Works in Mediaeval Law, by C. T. Flower (Selden
Society, 1915), Introduction, p. xxvii).
2 A great majority of the inhabitants of the Fens were " utterly hostile
to a general drainage of the Great Level. . . . The proceedings of the Com-
missioners of Sewers, basking in and flourishing under the sunbeams of royalty,
were exceedingly arbitrary " (History of the Drainage of the Great Level of the
30 THE COURT OF SEWERS
down of the newly established works and the bankruptcy of the
contractors, 1 ended at last in the patriotic Earl of Bedford taking
up the work for the good of the country. In 1663, after various
earlier attempts, he and his fellow-adventurers were incorporated
by Act of Parliament 2 into a new governing authority, the
" Corporation of the Governors, Bailiffs and Commonalty of the
Company of Conservators of the Great Level of the Fens " ; a
Company which combined, with the ordinary powers of Com-
missioners of Sewers, those of a group of owners in severalty
of 95,000 acres of " Adventurers' Lands," subject to onerous
common responsibilities for maintaining the drainage of the
whole 307,000 acres of the central Level of the Fenland, hence-
forth known as the Bedford Level. We cannot here relate the
long and complicated story of the reclamation of the " Great
Level " by the engineers whom the Earl and his fellow-ad-
venturers employed ; of the prolonged struggle between the wild
and lawless life of the fenmen, and the utilitarian but public-
spirited aims of the local landlords ; of the gigantic engineering
experiments, started with little science and less method, aban-
doned from lack of funds, hotly discussed and criticised at
meetings of county magnates, begun anew on fresh plans, and only
finally completed in our own day. Down to the early years of
the nineteenth century, various parts of the Great Level were
repeatedly " drowned " by exceptional floods. 3 Since that date,
as was prematurely observed eighty years ago, an " alteration
has taken place which may appear the effect of magic. . . .
A forlorn waste has been converted into pleasant and fertile
pastures. . . . Drainage, embankment, engines and enclosures
have given stability to the soil ... as well as salubrity to the
air. . . . Where sedge and rushes [grew] but a few years since
Fins culled llnlfonl Level, by Samuel Wells, vol. i. p. 105; Bee the Calendar ff
Shite Papers Domestic, especially for 1(>53-165G; and Ili.ttori/ of England, by
S. R. Gardiner, vol. i.).
1 For further details as to these "undertakers" for reclaiming " sur-
rounded " lands in different parts of England, especially characteristic of the
period 1600 I860, sec the History of Imbanking and Draining, by Sir William
Dugdale, 1652; Lives of the Engi rs, by Samuel Smiles, 1861, vol. i. part i.
16 Charles II. c. 13 (1663).
3 Such drownings have now ceased, though there was an exceptional
temporary inundation in 1862 (sec Th Story of a Igricutiural Estate, by
the Duke of Bedford, 1897, pp. 38-48; Reminisi f Fen and Mere, by
.1. .M. IFcathcote, lN7»i. pp. 97-08) ; and much land was under water for months
in the exceptional rainfall of 1012.
CONSTITUTION OF THE CORPORATION 31
we now have fields of waving oats and even wheat." x To-day,
though only because steam-power and centrifugal pumps have
replaced both the old windmills and the older horse-mills that
were brought to the aid of drainage by gravitation, 2 the Fenland
has at last been made permanently dry, and though much of its
ancient charm has fled, " the long lines of pollards with an
occasional windmill, stretching along the horizon as in a Dutch
landscape ; the wide extended flats of dark peaty soil intersected
by dykes and drains, with here and there a green tract covered
with sleek cattle, have an air of vastness, and even grandeur
which is sometimes very striking." 3 The anomalous Corporation
of the Bedford Level, under which, with the multitudinous Local
Boards, Trusts and Commissions, executing hundreds of separate
Acts of Parliament, most of the work has been done, still con-
tinues in vigorous existence. 4 But its constitution has remained
1 Report of Poor Law Commissioners on the Sanitary Condition of the
Labouring Classes, 1842, p. 80.
2 History of the Drainage, of the Great Level of the Fens, by S. Wells, 1830, vol. i.
p. 426 ; The Drainage of Fens and Low Lands, by W. H. Wheeler, 1888. Wind-
mills did not become numerous until after 1726 ; steam engines not for a
century afterwards ; and centrifugal pumps not until after the middle of the
nineteenth century (the Victoria County History of Lincolnshire, vol. ii. p. 351,
says not until 1867).
3 Lives of the Engineers, by Samuel Smiles, 1861, vol. ii. part vii. p. 169.
4 The Corporation of the Bedford Level, established by 15 Charles II. c. 13
(1663), consists of a Governor, six Bailiffs, twenty Conservators, who form
" the Board " or governing body, and the commonalty, made up of the
registered owners of the 95,000 acres of " Adventurers' Lands." All such
owners can attend the public meetings of the Corporation, but only those
possessing 100 acres or more can vote for the officers or the members of the
governing body, who (together with the Surveyor-General, the Register, the
Receiver and Expenditor-General, an Auditor, the Serjeant-at-Mace, four
Superintendents and numerous sluice-keepers) are elected annually, at a
meeting held, until 1809, at the " Fen Office " in London, but since that date
at Ely. The Conservators and the Bailiffs and Governor must be chosen from
owners of 200 and 400 acres respectively of Adventurers' Lands. The Governor
has always been the Earl (or Duke) of Bedford for the time being. The Cor-
poration, as such, owns none of the land, except its embankments and other
works, with the score or so of public-houses, the cottages, and the other erections
upon these embankments. Its corporate revenue (apart from the rents of
these houses and the privilege of fishing, and the tolls levied on traffic along
the banks and channels) is derived from taxation of the owners of the 95,000
acres of Adventurers' Lands. These have, since the Act of 20 Charles II.
(1668), been divided into eleven grades, paying from 4d. to 3s. 8d. per acre for
each single " tax." One or more such taxes are annually levied by the Board.
Payment can be enforced by distraint, or by sale by auction of the land in
default. In former years much was so forfeited, 20,000 acres being sometimes
on the " arrear roll." The method of sale was peculiar, the amount due being
stated, and offers being invited from those willing to pay the exact sum in
return for a certain acreage, the lowest bid in area being accepted, and that
32 THE COURT OF SEWERS
absolutely unique ; J and though it (and with it the Fenland
generally) amply deserves a constitutional historian of its own,
its story has little or no significance in the general course of
English Local Government. In particular, as it was not primarily
a Court of Sewers, as it has made practically no use of its powers
as such a Court, and as the innumerable statutory bodies working
under it, or alongside of it in the rest of the Fenland, 2 were them-
selves not Courts of Sewers, it can claim no further place in the
present chapter.
acreage being alone transferred. Its corporate expenditure is incurred in the
maintenance and repair of the various works under its charge throughout the
whole 307,000 acres of the Level. The different parts of the Level have also
separate organisations and taxations of their own ; partly due to the division
into the North, Middle, and South Levels, and the respective districts of each,
for which the Corporation keeps distinct accounts and levies differential t
expended by local committees ; partly due to the formation of District Boards,
Commissions and Trusts under innumerable Acts of Parliament, for the special
improvement of particular parts of the Level, or particular river channels,
under which taxes are levied on all the owners of the districts, and spent by
the different local governing bodies. So numerous were the Local Acts that
Parliament passed a Standing Order requiring special notice to be given to the
Corporation of the Bedford Level in each case (House of Commons Journals,
17th March 1813). It may be added that the members of the governing body
of the Corporation were, by the Act of 1663, constituted Commissioners of
Sewers in and for the entire Level, as well as for the works executed outside
it. The latter provision was taken advantage of in 1816 and 1822, in order
to enable the Corporation to take land compulsorily outside the Level, in order
to get puddling clay. A Jury was summoned by the Serjcant-at-Mace, and a
Court of Sewers held. Such a court was thenceforth regularly held as a
matter of form. A glimpse of the organisation and procedure of the Corpora-
tion in 1822 is afforded by the Autobiographic Recollections of George Pryme,
1870, pp. 144-148. Apart from the works cited ante, p. 28, we know of no
statistical or other exact account of the complicated local government set up
by all this machinery ; or of its state at the present day. By permission of
Mr. Rowland Prothero (now Lord Ernie), we have looked through the MS.
Minutes of the North Level Commissioners, under an Act of 1754, from that
date down to 1818, and we find them no different from those of Improvement
Commissioners of the ordinary type, which we subsequently describe.
1 In the reign of Charles II. a Bill is said to have passed the House of Lords,
but to have been rejected by the House of Commons, for establishing, for
Hatfield Chase in Lincolnshire, a Corporation exactly like thai of the Bedford
Level [History and Topograph!/ of the Isle of Axhnlmc, by Lev. \V. B. Stoneh
L839, p. 103).
2 It is said of South Lincolnshire alone that "upwards of a hundred and
sixty Acts have been passed relating to the drainage, reclamation a ml enclosure "
of this part of the Fenland [History <>f the Ft ns of South Lincolnshire, by W. if.
Wheeler, L894, preface). There were, for instance, "seventeen sets of Com-
rs or other authorities having jurisdiction over the Witham between
Grantham and the Sea " (77k Rainfall, Water Supply and Drainage of
shire, by W. If. Wheeler, 1879, pp. 17, 26).
ROMNEY MARSH 33
Romney Marsh
Turning from the unique Corporation of the Bedford Level to
the Courts of Sewers in rural districts, we are confronted with
the remarkable jurisdiction of the Lords of the Level of Romney
Marsh. 1 We have already described the emerging into history
in the thirteenth century of the ancient local organisation for the
management of the sluices and embankments of this part of the
Kentish coast. Without attempting to trace its career for the
next four centuries, we find it in 1689 in full operation as a Court
of Sewers, existing by prescription fortified by ancient decrees
and charters, without any Commission from the Crown under the
Statute of Sewers. This organisation has continued, with the
very minimum of alteration, down to the present day — an im-
mobility and persistence which is in itself remarkable. We can
therefore combine in a single description both its condition in
1689 and its slight development down to 1835.
The government of Romney Marsh remains, as it has apparently
been from the earliest historic times, in the hands of the principal
landed proprietors. The " Lords of the Level," as they have
always been called, consist of the owners for the time being of
1 For " the Lords of the Level of Romney Marsh " — to be distinguished
from the entirely distinct Chartered Corporation of the Bailiff, Jurats and
Commonalty of Romney Marsh, a Municipal Corporation which we have in-
cidentals described in The Manor and the Borough, 1908, vol. ii. pp. 262, 281,
298, 299," 325, 327, 329, 333, 361, 367, 492, 791— we have had the privilege of
access to the MS. archives from 1602 onward, preserved in the fine Elizabethan
hall of the Lords, behind their great embankment at Dymchurch. We have
found no adequate printed description of their organisation or functions.
Beyond the great work of Sir William Dugdale, and the so-called History of
Romney Marsh, by William Holloway, 1849, pp. 174-175, which contains
singularly little on this point, we can only refer the student to the often re-
printed Laws and Customs of Romney Marsh, dating from the thirteenth century,
of which the last separate edition seems to have been that of 1840 ; and to
such incidental references as are contained in papers in the Proceedings of the
Institute of Civil Engineers, especially " An Account of the Dymchurch Wall "
by James Elliot, jun. (vol. vi. pp. 466-484, 1847), and another by Green and
Borthwick (vol. vii. pp. 194-196, 1848) ; The Report of . . . British Archaeo-
logical Association . . . meeting at Canterbury, 1844 ; the Report of the Royal
Commission on Tidal Harbours, 1845 ; the Report on Excavations at Lymne, by
Charles Roach Smith, 1852 ; the papers by Thomas Lewin and W. H. Black
on " The Portus Lemanis of the Romans," in Archaeologia, vol. xl. pp. 361, 380 ;
the various papers in vol. xiii. of Archaeologia Cantiana, 1880 ; History of the
Weald of Kent, by Robert Furley, 1871-1874 ; The Cinque Ports, by Montagu
Burrows, 1888 ; and A Quiet Corner of England, by Basil Champneys, 1875.
D
34 THE COURT OF SEWERS
twenty-three particular estates in the Marsh, 1 together with the
Bailiff for the time being of the chartered Municipal Corporation
into which the commonalty of the Marsh had, in 1461, been
formed. The Lords have the right of nominating deputies to
represent them ; and we find, as a matter of fact, in 1689 and
1835 as in 1922, most of them using this privilege. Once a year,
in Whit week, 2 the Lords or their deputies met, as a " General
Lath " or " Grand Lath," to appoint the officers of the Level, to
decide upon the " scot " or general Marsh Rate to be levied, and
to order any considerable works of repair. At other meetings,
often held monthly and known as Special Laths, or Petty Laths,
the current routine business was despatched and any urgent
matter required for the welfare of " the Country," as the Level
seems often to have been called. The officers of the Level were
an Expenditor, — originally, perhaps, one of the Lords, but by
1689 a salaried executive officer 3 in whom some engineering
knowledge came gradually to be expected— two Surveyors,
taken in turn from among the Lords or deputies themselves ; the
Bailiff of the Marsh, who was also the head of the Municipal
Corporation of the Commonalty ; an Expenditor of the Water-
ings, who apparently disbursed the proceeds of the separate
differential " scots " levied upon the sixteen different districts
into which the Marsh was divided ; and the Common Clerk, who
wrote the letters and recorded the proceedings of the Lords. 4 The
Bailiff of the Marsh, annually appointed, as we have mentioned,
by the twenty-three Lords of the Level, but nevertheless entitled
to sit and vote as one of them, was the common head of two
distinct organisations, both subordinate to the Lords of the Level.
Under the Charter of 1461 he was the head of the Corporation of
the Bailiff, Jurats and Commonalty of Romney Marsh, renewing
itself by co-option, which exercised over the whole area the
magisterial and other functions of a Municipal Corporation, and
1 No documentary warrant, by Charter or statute, can be produced for this
hereditary descent of a local governing authority — a unique instance, so far as
\\( know, in tho Britain of the twentieth century, of government by tenure,
resting merely "M prescription.
2 "The Lords, Bailiffs, Jurats and other officers <>f Romney Marsh . . .
... a General Court called the Lath every Wnitsnn week, for the dis-
patch i if all affairs which depend hereon " (Travels over England, Scotland and
Wall". l>y Re\. .lames Brome, 1700, p. 268).
3 Already in 1670 he was paid i'20 a year for "extraordinary services"
(MS. .Minutes. Lords of Romney Marsh, 1070).
* Ibid. passim.
THE JURATS OF THE MARSH 35
which has already been described by us as such. 1 But the
Bailiff had under him also the Jurats of the Level — sometimes
designated Jurats of the Walls, or even Jurats of the Marsh —
who might by tradition be twenty-four in number, but who seem
usually not to have exceeded half a dozen. These were appointed
for life by the Lords of the Level from time to time ; and they
were not necessarily, or even usually, the same as the Jurats of
the Municipal Corporation of Komney Marsh. These Jurats of
the Level were chosen from among the principal tenant farmers
of the Marsh, and their function was to serve, under the Bailiff,
as local advisers and superintendents. 2 They acted as a Jury
when any land was required, either for the enlargement of the
defences, or " to be carted," as the phrase ran, for strengthening
the great sea-wall. 3 There was, moreover, yet another sub-
ordinate organisation of the Marsh, by its immemorial division
into sixteen " Waterings," each under the Expenditor of Water-
ings, having its own " Quilor," or collector appointed for life
at the General Lath ; sometimes its own Expenditor, levying
and expending, under the general authority of the Lords of the
Level, a separate Watering Scot, or differential rate ; and
apparently also its own subordinate officers, who could be
ordered, as in 1670, to " brush " the common sewers of their
Watering at least once a year. 4
1 This peculiar Municipal Corporation (as to which see The Manor and the
Borough, pp. 272, 281, 298, 309, 325, 327, 329, 333, 361, 367, 492, 721) still
(1922) continues to exist in its unrefonned state, its members annually electing,
from among its twenty-four Jurats, four of them to act as Justices of the Peace.
These, with the Aldermen of the City of London, the Mayors of Boroughs
and the Chairmen of the Urban District Councils, are (1922) probably the
only popularly elected magistrates in England. The Corporation of Romney
Marsh was omitted from the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, and was
specially excepted from the operation of that of 1883.
2 Thus, in 1611, the Bailiff and Jurats are instructed "to be assisting to
the Expenditor to look after the workmen " ; being allowed eighteen pence
each per day employed (MS. Minutes, Lords of Romney Marsh, 1611).
3 " It is ordered that a survey be taken by the Bailiff and Jurats on the
land of Mr. B. in the occupation of T. A., and now fenced off to the Country ;
and to report the quantity, quality and value of the said land3 at the next
General Lath ; and that the same be discharged and discontinued from paying
any further scots for the future from this present Lath " (ibid. 1707). " Ordered
that the Bailiff and Jurats do before the next monthly meeting survey the lands
of the said A. B. where the Country shall have occasion to set a wall, and at
the said monthly meeting to report the quantity and quality and value of the
said lands " (ibid. 1707).
4 Ibid. 1670. The officers of the Waterings had to be in attendance at
every Lath. " It is ordered that the Surveyors do give to the Marsh six days
notice of every monthly account, and that they forthwith give notice to the
36 THE COURT OF SEWERS
Under this somewhat complicated organisation — which re-
mained, notwithstanding its elaboration, essentially of the most
primitive type — the proprietors, tenant farmers and wage
labourers of Romney Marsh seem to have jogged along in peace
with, the very minimum of history. Most of the Lords habitually
left it to their agents or stewards to attend the Laths, and
to serve in turn as Surveyors. The two Surveyors, usually
appointed in alphabetical order, indiscriminately from among
Lords or deputies, acted for their year of service as a sort of
executive committee, with whom the Common Clerk or the
Expenditor would confer. The Expenditor carried out all the
works. The Bailiff and his four or six Jurats served as a kind of
Standing Jury, either reporting " on their own view and know-
ledge " minor repairs that were required, or superintending the
different works : occasionally, as we have seen, assessing the
compensation due to particular owners and occupiers. We do
not find that the vague authority of the Lath to levy " scots " ;
to appropriate the " Marsh thorns " ; x to occupy particular
lands for new defences, sluices or roads ; or to order the valuable
top soil of other lands, as the phrase ran, " to be carted " to the
wall, was ever disputed. 2
Sergeant, and the Sergeant give four days notice to the Bailiff, Jurats and
Quilors of the several Waterings, that they may give their attendance at the
said account ; and that the said Quilors give in their said accounts at every
monthly meeting " (MS. Minutes, Lords of Romney Marsh, 1G89). There was
sometimes also an " Expenditor of the Outlands," and we hear of a Woodreeve,
a Sergeant of the Walls, and other officers.
1 This relates to the stunted whitethorn trees which once existed on the
Marsh. Down to the middle of the eighteenth century timber was extensively
used in strengthening the sea-wall ; and the Lords of the Level enforced a
right of felling, for the use of " the Country," such trees as were needed. With
this view, all clumps of trees on the Marsh — called " bush " — were held sacred
and reserved, the owner having no power to destroy them for his own purposes.
When a " bush " w r as deemed unsuitable, or not likely to be required, it might
bo "discharged," and thus placed fully within the power of the landowner.
Hence wo read, in the first volume of the existing minutes (1602-1671), many
entries such as "Mr. A.'s bush discharged"; "all bushes to be discharged
which shall he reported not worth keeping" ; and "all bashes to be surveyed
after the Ceilings [to see] if felled according to order." The owners were paid
so much a load for these" Marsh thorns " {ibid. 1602-1671). Allsuoh" bush "
bad, we learn, disappeared from the Marsh by 1700. ("Account of the
Dymchurcb Wall." by dames Elliott, jun., in Proceedings of Institute of <
Engineers, 1847, vol. \ i. pp. 466-484.)
2 Arrears sometimes accumulated, chiefly through the neglect of the Bailiff,
who delayed to enforce payment " by the usual return of a Bill nf Wains, accord-
ing to the Laws and Customs of Romney Marsh (MS. Minutes, Lords of
Romney .Marsh. 1S20).
THE "WATERING SCOTS" 37
The thousand years of warfare with the waves, by which
alone the Marsh had been won, had evidently produced an
abiding sense of the need for a strong government. 1 Along
with this goes perhaps the fact that the compensation which " the
Country " made to the individual was assessed on a liberal scale.
If he had to cede his thorns to repair the wall, he secured a good
market for every load. If his land was taken, both he and his
tenant farmer got generous terms. 2 Even if it was merely the
surface of two or three acres that was " carted " to the wall, he
might be paid " twenty years' purchase at the rate of twenty-two
shillings per acre per annum," whilst his tenants would receive
compensation in addition " for the damage in their herbage and
grass." 3 The cost of the works, as of the current administration,
was defrayed by substantial rates or scots levied according to
acreage, either uniformly throughout the Marsh, or upon one or
more Waterings, and collected from the tenant farmers. These
rates sometimes ran up to six or seven shillings per acre, but it
was customary for the landlords to allow their tenants to deduct
from their rents any exceptional levies. Such allowances have
always been recommended by the Lath ; 4 and it has long been
the practice of the owners voluntarily to allow the tenants any
excess in the rate over half-a-crown per acre. At the very end
of our survey, it was suggested by the Expenditor of Waterings,
in 1833, that the differential " Watering Scots " might be done
away with, and merged in the general scot levied on all alike 5
— a suggestion that was presently adopted.
1 Only once do we find the authority of the Lords seriously questioned, and
that was subsequent to 1835. In 1854 some discontented persons obtained a
Mandamus against them, ordering them to show cause why they did not appoint
the full number of 24 Jurats of the Marsh. The Lords resisted, claiming full
discretion, and the case came to trial at the Assizes in July 1856. No decision
was arrived at, as it was agreed by the parties to state a special case for the
Court of King's Bench ; and before this was done the claimants abandoned the
case (MS. Minutes, Lords of Romney Marsh, 1854-1856).
8 In 1732 an owner was paid thirty years' purchase at thirty shillings per
acre per annum, for land taken for the wall (ibid. 17th May 1732).
3 Ibid. 1707.
4 " At this Lath," we read in 1706, " it is declared that (considering the
expensive and extraordinary scots to be raised for the defence of this Level)
it is very reasonable that the landlords and owners of land in this Level do
allow proportionate part of the scots paid by their tenants, forasmuch as their
inheritance is in danger " (ibid. 1706).
5 Ibid. 23rd May 1833. These differential rates had begun to be complained
of. In 1829 the Lath imposed (1) a general " scot " of sixpence per acre ;
(2) an additional sixpence " on the Wall " ; (3) half-a-crown " on Willop and
38 THE COURT OF SEWERS
We need not follow the chequered engineering experiences
of the Lords of the Level ; the successive stages by which their
Expenditor became an expert civil engineer, commanding a
permanent staff of skilled workmen ; 1 the calling in of the great
Rennie in 1803 to organise their defences on a scientific basis ;
the multiplication and elaboration of their sewers and sluices ;
and the gradual transformation of their great dam, from a shingle
bank strengthened by a long perpendicular earthwork, " armed '
by a facing of brushwood, held down by oak stakes and lathes, 2
into the present massive front of stone and concrete, guarded
by projecting steps and breakwaters. 3 More interesting may
be the glimpse that we catch, in 1804, of the visit of " the
Chancellor of the Exchequer and Lord Warden of the Cinque
Ports " (William Pitt), accompanied by three Generals, to
arrange for the instant flooding of the whole Marsh in the
expected event of the French landing. Four of the Lords of
the Level were got together to meet the Great Commoner, and
these took upon themselves to order the Common Clerk, if he
received the word from the General in command, to direct the
Expenditor instantly to open the sluices and admit the sea —
a patriotic order confirmed nine days later at a Special Lath. 4
It is one of the minor paradoxes of English Local Government
that the Lords of the Level of Romney Marsh, whose reorganisa-
tion in 1258 by Sir Henry de Bathe became a starting-point for
subsequent reorganisations of local Courts of Sewers all over
Home's Waterings " ; and (4) one and fivepence " on the Waterings sewing
at Clobsdon." The occupiers of Willop and Home's Waterings protested that
this charge ought to bo met by a general scot ; and the Lath adopted their
view (MS. Minutes, Lords of Romney Marsh, May, July and August. 1829).
1 In 1814 the Lords put the office up to auction, inviting by advertisement
" tenders for the place of Expenditor . . . from persons undertaking the
management of the Walls and Sewers " (ibid. 1814).
- See paper by Green and Borthwick in Proceedings of Institute of Civil
Engineers, 1848, vol. vii. pp. 194-196.
3 In 1700 much of the Marsh was under water, and the defences had to bo
Strengthened. Between 17(16 and 1806 great timber groins were constructed
to prevent the ahingle shifting. Not until 1803 was any professional engineer
consulted : and then about £50,000 was spent on Rennie's advice, in trans-
forming the Wall from a perpendicular to a sloping dam. Stone did not begin
bo be used until ISJ"), and the present systematic walling of stone and concrete
was begun in 1837 <>n the advice of Walker ("An Account of the Dymchurch
Wall." by .lames Elliott, jun., in Proceedings of the Institute of Civil Engineers,
1847, vol. \i. pp. 166-484).
* MB. .Minutes. Lords of Romney Marsh, 5th September 1804 ; 3ee footnote
on p. 100.
THE RURAL COMMISSIONS 39
the country ; whose " Laws and Customs " were specifically
adopted as the model for all other Courts, and were eventually
made the basis of the celebrated Statute of Sewers, should never
themselves have come under that statute, or been included in
any Commission of Sewers from the Lord Chancellor. The
Lords of the Level continue to-day (1922), as they were in
1689-1835, an ancient relic of pre-statutory local government,
which we have had perforce to describe as a Court of /Sewers —
indeed, as the very arch-type of all Courts of Sewers — but which
nevertheless is not, and never has been, as other Courts of
Sewers are.
Somersetshire
We return to our description of the constitutional evolution
of the ordinary Courts of Sewers acting under periodically
renewed Commissions from the Crown. Exactly how many
Commissions of Sewers were in force at each period between
1689 and 1835 is not now to be discovered, though we gather
that it never exceeded a hundred. 1 They were, we infer,
occasionally initiated during the eighteenth century among the
Justices in Quarter Sessions, who directed the Clerk of the Peace
to petition for a Commission of Sewers for a particular district,
where some authoritative intervention was required ; when
the Justices ordered him to pay the fees out of the county fund. 2
Excluding the authorities of the Fenland, and those which we
shall presently describe as acting for the Metropolitan area, the
proceedings of these Courts of Sewers do not appear to have
been either important or exciting. Their organisation appears
1 The number is given as 80 in the First Report of the Royal Commission on
the Health of Large Towns, 1845. A list of 42 will be found in the Report of
the Poor Law Commissioners on Local Taxation, 1844, which is there stated to
comprise all the commissions then in force (p. 71). But this includes only two
or three of the Fenland authorities. The 42 Courts had 5809 members, varying
from 16 (Fobbing in Essex) and 18 (Narberth and Tenby), up to 290 for
Nottingham District, and no fewer than 593 for Somersetshire. We note the
statement, without verifying it, that these rural commissions of sewers present
striking resemblances to the " associations polderiennes " or (the very word
used for a district and rating unit in Romney Marsh) " wateringen " existing
in Belgium (Le Gouvernmenl Local de V Anglelerre, by Maurice Vauthier, 1895,
p. 342).
2 So in Suffolk in 1745 for the Hundreds of Blything, Wangford, Mutford
and Lothingland (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Suffolk, 7th October 1745) ;
and in Cambridgeshire in 1795 for 30 parishes about Trumpington and Grant-
chester (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Cambridgeshire, 16th January and
13th February 1795).
40 THE COURT OF SEWERS
to have been of the most primitive character. 1 It is, however,
fair to warn the student that this is the most obscure corner in
the whole of English Local Government. We know of no
detailed description of the actual working of these Courts in
the rural districts, 2 and only in two cases have we been able
to consult their manuscript records. What seems interesting,
from such scanty information as we possess, is the unexpected
part that, during the eighteenth century, we find played by the
Jury.
To take, for instance, the county of Somerset, which had
many square miles of marsh, including the ancient " Isle of
Avalon " and the historic Athelney, to be protected from floods. 3
1 " In the rural districts the men appointed as surveyors by the local Com-
missioners [of Sewers] are very little better than common labourers. . . . They
are commonly a sort of foreman of the labourers, called ditchcasters " (Poor
Law Commissioners' 1 General Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring
Population, 1842, p. 316).
2 Brief and unilluminating accounts of such rural Commissions may occa-
sionally be found in local histories: see, for instance, that of the Tendring
Hundred Level (Essex) in Tendring Hundred in the Olden Time, by J. Yellowby
Watson, 1878, p. 70 ; and those of the two separate " Levels " of Gloucester-
shire, in New History of Gloucestershire, by S. Rudder, 1779, p. 26. A paper
on the Commissioners for the Lewes Levels by Sir Henry Ellis will be found
in Sussex Archaeological Collections, vol. x., 1858, pp. 95-99, giving documents of
1421-1538 only. More information as to their working may be gained from
occasional cases, such as R. v. Commissioners of Sewers for Essex, 1820, in
Reports of Cases, etc., by J. Dowling and A. Ryland, vol. ii., 1823, pp. 700-700 ;
or from the very infrequent controversial pamphlets.
An " Order of the Court of Sewers for Berks and Oxon," held at Abingdon,
26th May 1681, is given in House of Lords Manuscripts, vol. i. (N.S.), 1900,
pp. 547-548. Some Municipal Corporations (among which we may mention
Norwich, Southampton and Oxford) got established Courts of Sewers to help
them to deal with their river conservancy and navigation ; and we have been
able to consult the records of these Courts, which often became practically com-
mittees of the Corporation, among the municipal archives (see The Manor and
the Borough, 1908, pp. 556, 577, etc.).
3 For the Somerset Courts of Sewers, we have been able to consult the MS.
Minnies from 1789 to 1S35 ; see also the incidental references and descriptions
in Tin History of Imbanhing and Draining, by Sir William Dugdalc, 1652,
pp. 104-110 of edition of 1772 ; General View of tin Agriculture of the County
of Son . I.y John Billingsley, 1794. pp. 123-126, 2nd edition, 1798, pp. 166-
198; Observations on the, Gnat Marshes and T of . . . Somerset, by
Rev. W. Phelps, L835; "An Historical Account of the Marshlands of Somerset."
by Richard Locke, in Bath and West of England Agricultural Society's Litters
ami Papers, vol. viii. pp. 259-284 ; Report of the Poor Law Commissioners on
tin Sanitary Condition of (he labouring Population, 1842, pp. 86-87; Lives of
the Engineers, by S. Smiles. 1861, vol. i. p. 15; A General Account of West
Somerset, by Edward Jeboult, 1S73, pp. 85-86; The Seaboard of Mendip, by
F. A. Knight, 1902 ; History of a Part of West Somerset, by Sir C. EL II. Chad-
wick llealev. 1901 : and Victoria County History of Somerset, vol. ii. chapter
on "Social and Economic History," by Gladys Bradford. Something may be
SOMERSETSHIRE 41
Here, as in the Fenland, the " drownings " were " caused, not
so much by high tides from the sea, as by the banks of the main
rivers not being sufficiently strong or elevated, and from the
bridges not being capacious enough to carry the immense body
of water brought down from the neighbouring hills and country
higher up, which, in heavy rains, sometimes takes place so
rapidly as to completely overflow the banks in twenty-four
hours." But, in addition to the inundations due to this cause,
or to the " casual or accidental giving way of the banks of the
rivers," minor floodings were sometimes caused, we are told,
" by interested persons for the purpose of warding off the mischief
from themselves by throwing it on their neighbours." *■ The
casual interventions of the King's Justices to settle the disputes
that arose as to drainage seem to have been succeeded, long
before the end of the seventeenth century, 2 by a single and
virtually permanent Commission of Sewers for the whole county,
which included, as we gather, practically all the important
landowners. But it is significant that we do not find this body,
as might have been expected from the tenor of its Commission,
holding a single Court of Sewers, using a Jury of indifferent
persons summoned by the Sheriff 3 to try issues of fact, issuing
its decrees by its own officers, executing the works decided on
by its own ordinances, and levying its Sewers Rate upon the
whole of the marsh lands within its jurisdiction. On the con-
trary, we see, right down to the nineteenth century, the daily
administration of the banks and sluices of the Somerset marshes
performed — as we imagine, quite extra-legally — by a couple of
thousand of the marsh-dwelling commonalty, divided into about
a hundred separate bodies called Juries. Each marsh had, in
gathered from the important case, R. v. Commissioners of Sewers for Somerset,
in Reports of Cases, etc., by Sir E. H. East, vol. vii. p. 71; the Sedge-
moor and other Inclosure Acts ; the " Drainage Awards " for the Axe and the
Brue, and for Congresbury, 1806, 1810 and 1826, in Seventh Report of Hist.
MSS. Commission ; and from various papers in the Transactions of the Somerset
Archaeological and Natural History Society, from 1849 onwards.
1 Report of the Poor Law Commissioners on the Sanitary Condition of the
Labouring Population, 1842, p. 86.
2 Commissions of Sewers for different parts of Somerset have been traced
from 1304 (A General Account of West Somerset, by E. Jeboult, 1873, p. 85).
3 So little had the High Sheriff to do with constituting or attending the
Somerset Courts of Sewers as a county official that we find him, on one occasion,
presiding over the Court as a Commissioner during his year of office as Sheriff
(MS. Minutes, Court of Sewers, Somerset, Bridgwater, 18th March 1801).
42 THE COURT OF SEWERS
fact, its own Standing Jury, composed, not of indifferent persons
summoned by the Sheriff from the body of the county, but of
the occupiers of the lands and tenements actually concerned
impanelled by the Foremen of the Juries themselves ; serving
apparently in rotation or on the nomination of the other jury-
men ; 1 presided over by a Foreman on whom great responsibility
was cast, and who was compelled to act continuously for at least
ten years, 2 making their own regular perambulations of their
respective marshes to scrutinise all the banks and walls, " clys "
and " rhines," gates and sluices ; formulating their decisions
in " presentments " on their own view and knowledge ; amercing
individuals for neglect to fulfil their customary obligations ;
deciding whether the necessary repairs fell to the charge of
particular landholders or should be paid for by a " Moor Rate "
on the marsh as a whole ; and, through their Foremen, both
collecting and expending the rate so assessed. 3
It is impossible not to see in these Standing Juries the sur-
viving remnants of some primitive organisation, under which
1 " Chcdzoy Jury, W. H. and J. E. to be discharged next Sessions on pro-
viding two men to be sworn in their stead (MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners,
Somerset, Bridgwater, 11th June 1790). " Any two jurymen . . . are allowed
to exchange places on their respective Juries on application to the Court "
{ibid. Langport, 29th September 1790). " Whereas," runs a decree of the
Langport Court in 1790, " several improper persons are compelled to serve,
and others are drawn to attend the duty of sewers at a great distance from
their homes ; a number of Juries are composed of 23 persons, while others
have scarce enough to perform their duty properly ; and a quick succession
takes place in some Juries, the persons thereon sometimes serving no more
than two years, while others are compelled to serve twenty years, it is hereby
ordered that . . . the Clerk issue no summons for a juror or jurors till he or
they shall be presented to this Court as proper persons to serve on Juries at
the Sessions of Sewers ; and the Foremen of all and every Jury arc ordered
to make a list of persons so to be presented at the following sessions " {ibid.
Langport, 29th September 1790).
- '" Ashcotc Jury, Mr. .J. M. Foreman, to go out of the Jury next Sessions "
{ibid. Bridgwater, 11th Juno 1790). "That no person who shall have been
discharged as Foreman of a Jury of Sewers shall at any future time be subject
tn be called upon to serve on a Jury but as Foreman ; and that no Foreman
.shall be discharged under service of ten years, unless sufficient cause shall be
shown to the contrary " {ibid. Langport, 1st June 1803).
3 " A rate granted at fourpence per acre for the repair of the clys, bridge
and rhines within the parish of Weston Zoyland, and Mr. T. H. and Mr. T. are
appointed Collectors; sura raised £35:15:5" {ibid. Bridgwater, 8th May
L789). "A rate was granted at ten shillings per leaze on 74 leazes for re-
pairing Ham Wall: sura raised £37" {ibid. Bridgwater. 11th June 1790).
" Upon the petition <>f the Foreman and Jurors ... it is ordered that a rate
be granted on the proprietors of lands in the Salt Marsh at threepence in the
pound for repairing and amending certain walls, old clys and other works"
ibid. Bridgwater, 8th October 1790).
MULTIPLICATION BY FISSION 43
the peasant owners or occupiers of each marsh looked after their
little defences. In the nineteenth century — perhaps because
of the animadversions of the Judges, who could not understand
how there came to be a Standing Jury of neighbours instead of
a Jury of indifferent persons summoned by the Sheriff from the
body of the Coimty ; or perhaps in direct consequence of the
1833 Act — we see these ancient Juries fading away, and being
replaced in their administrative functions, after 1833, by Dyke-
reeves acting under the instructions of the Commissioners
themselves. 1
As we have already mentioned, the Somerset marshes came
very early to enjoy, instead of the occasional intervention of
specially commissioned Justices of Sewers, the superintendence
of a virtually permanent body of the principal landowners. It
is interesting to see that, as the Court of Sewers for the County
of Somerset, this body itself assumed an extra-legal form, possibly
in conformity with ancient local custom. The Commissioners,
instead of holding one Court, divided themselves habitually into
four groups, according to the locality of their lands, each district
having its own Court, distinct from the rest of the county.
Each Court had the superintendence of the two or three dozen
Juries of its neighbourhood. 2 The scanty minutes of what were
virtually four, and presently five, separate Courts, which sat
respectively at Bridgwater, Axbridge, Langport, Glastonbury
and Wells, with occasional adjournments to smaller places, show
how formal or spasmodic was the intervention which the half
a dozen Commissioners who deigned to attend the annual or
six-monthly Court of their district exercised in the administration
of its drainage works. A large proportion of the decrees of the
Courts relate, indeed, not to the works, but to the Juries— fining
1 MS. Minutes, Court of Sewers, Somerset, 1833-1834 ; R. v. Commissioners
of Sewers for Somerset, in Reports of Cases, etc., by Sir E. H. East, vol. vii.
p. 71 ; Observations on the Great Marshes and Turbaries of . . . Somerset, by
Rev. W. Phelps, 1835, pp. 6-8.
2 These Courts even multiplied themselves by fission. In 1827, in response
to petitions from several of the Juries, the Court held at Wells came to the
conclusion that " the holding of a Session at Glastonbury twice a year, as well
as Wells, would tend greatly to the expediting the public business and be a
great convenience to several of the Juries, who are obliged to take a long
journey to Wells." Accordingly, 16 of the Juries are ordered henceforth to
attend at Glastonbury only, the Commissioners similarly divide themselves in
their attendance as their propinquity dictates, and what to all intents and
purposes is a separate Court is thenceforth constituted (MS. Minutes, Court
of Sewers, Somerset, Wells, 8th August 1827).
44 THE COURT OF SEWERS
persons who refuse the onerous office, or fail to put in an appear-
ance ; * discharging those who are unfit for service or who under-
take to provide a substitute ; transferring particular banks and
sluices from the purview of one Jury to that of another ; auditing
the accounts of the Foremen as Collectors and Expenditors, and
so on. Beyond this general work of supervising the action of
the Juries, the chief function of the Somerset Courts seems to
have been that of formally confirming and legalising the various
small " Moor Rates " imposed for the works ordered by the
several Juries ; and that of arbitrating between the Juries and
particular owners or occupiers on whom the duty of repair had
been cast. On complaint from one or other party, the Court
would depute some of its members to hold a special " view," 2
and on report made to the next Court would pronounce a final
decree. In an exceptional case we see a Court requiring or
permitting a joint meeting of all the Juries within its Division
(which may, however, have been only a meeting of their Fore-
men), to " present that from the imperfect drainage . . . through
the whole of the said Division the same is continually flooded . . .
and . . . that it appears necessary that some new drains should
be made." The Court thereupon points out that such works
would necessitate an Act of Parliament, for which the Com-
missioners decide to apply. 3 But so little did the Commissioners
deal with executive business that the minutes hardly ever show
them as entering into contracts either for works or supplies. It
is clear that each Expenditor bought his own supplies and hired
his own labour. When, however, unusually important works
were specified in any Jury presentment, as, for instance, the
rebuilding of a sea-wall, it is occasionally suggested in the latter
years that the advice of a competent engineer should be obtained ;
and then we see the Commissioners employing such an officer,
discussing his report, and apparently ordering the work, at the
expense, be it noted, of the landholders of the particular marsh,
who in one case are expressly requested " to advance necessary
sums of money," to be adjusted when the rate on all those
1 " If. .1. I\ of Taunton, silversmith, lined £f> for not attending his Foreman
and .Fury on their view. Absolutely having bees duly summoned. Estreated
Minutes, ('cent oi Sewers, Bridgwater, 7th October L791). Generally, the
lines were remit tod, on the juror attending, subject to his paying a small fee for
icharge.
' Ibid. Bridgwater, 8th May 17 3 Ibid. Langport, 4th June L800.
EAST KENT 45
interested has been levied. 1 When extensive new works were
required for the drainage of the River Axe district, the Court of
Sewers exercising jurisdiction over that district sanctioned an
Act of Parliament being obtained. But that Act conferred the
necessary powers on a separate body of Commissioners, who
carried out the work, brought their business to a close within
the ten years allowed to them by the Act, and then handed the
district back to the Court of Sewers to be administered for the
future under its ordinary powers. 2
East Kent
The owners and occupiers of lands in East Kent 3 had an easier,
if a more varied problem to deal with than those of Somerset.
1 MS. Minutes, Court of Sewers, Bridgwater, 22nd January and 6th February
1799. In another case, where a proprietor had himself repaired Huntspill
sea-wall, he compelled the Commissioners by mandamus to levy a rate for his
reimbursement, after they had formally refused to do so, on all the proprietors
of lands within that particular Level (ibid. Bridgwater, 11th January and 28th
September 1802, 10th and 27th June 1803).
2 Ibid. Axbridge, 20th November 1800, 26th January, 11th February,
18th March, 18th May, 6th and 20th January, and 20th October 1801, 1st
October 1811. River Axe Drainage Act, 1802; Observations on the Great
Marshes and Turbaries of . . . Somerset, by Rev. W. Phelps, 1835, p. 13 ;
The Seaboard of Mendip, by F. A. Knight, 1902, pp. 350-351. This precedent
was not always followed. The Brue Drainage Act of 1801 (41 George III. c. 72)
seems to have been administered by the Commissioners who acted in the Mid-
land Division of the County, meeting at Wells ; but their proceedings under
it seem, from the exiguous MS. Minutes, 1801-1880, to have been unimportant,
involving only one meeting a year. The Sedgemoor Drainage Act (10 & 11
William III. c. 26 (1699) was similarly administered by those for the Western
Division, meeting at Bridgwater. Sedgemoor was enclosed under Act of 1791
(31 George III. c. 91). There is now a Drainage Board under the Acts of 1865
and 1877 (28 & 29 Vic. c. 23, and 40 & 41 Vic. c. 36).
3 We know the Commissioners of Sewers for East Kent practically only
through their MS. Minutes, which we have read from 1681 to 1829. There were
other Courts of Sewers within the County, one of them mentioned as existing
in 1290 in Sir William Dugdale's History of Imbanking and Draining, edition
of 1772, p. 37. Some correspondence of 1747-1759 as to various Courts of Sewers
in Kent is catalogued in the Archives of All Souls College, by C. Trice Martin,
1877, pp. 226-227 ; whilst incidental references to these Courts will be found
in the House of Lords Journals for 16th May 1776, and in such works as
Collections for a History of Sandwich, by W. Boys, 1792, p. 724, and History of
Romney Marsh, by W. Hollo way, 1849. We have not fathomed the relations
between these several Courts of Sewers, including that mentioned in the old
pamphlets about the Rother Levels in South-West Kent, entitled A Remon-
strance of some Decrees and other Proceedings of the Commissioners of Sewers,
1659 ; An Objection made against the Abatement of the Scots of those lands, formerly
deep drowned lands and now called summer lands, 1650 ; and The Animadverter
Animadverted, 1663 — all by Sir Nathaniel Powell, Bart. Nor do we know what
relations, if any, they had with the Lords of the Level of Romney Marsh.
46 THE COURT OF SEWERS
Here and there along the coast, from Whitstable to Deal, we read
of the occasional inroads of the sea. More troublesome than
these winter storms seem to have been the sluggish streams of
the Stour and its tributaries, which were always getting choked
with weeds, and causing, at every rainy season, floodings of the
adjacent lands. Even in the ancient " County Corporate " of
the City of Canterbury, the houses along the river were in such
continual peril of inundation that we find their owners specially
charged at a double rate for the maintenance of the river banks. 1
And in this County, more than in any other, we hear of the misdeeds
of the millers, who will not open their sluices so as to let down
the water which is " drowning " the lands above them ; or who
do not stop the weeds from passing down the stream to the
annoyance of those below them. 2 To remedy all these evils, we
find existing in 1689, a single body of Commissioners, over one
hundred in number, whose jurisdiction apparently extended
from Whitstable on the north, right away to Wye on the south-
west, and covered all the eastern portion of the County of
Kent, including the City of Canterbury, and, at Sandwich,
even a small part of the territory of the Liberty of the Cinque
Ports.
The hundred or more Commissioners of Sewers for East Kent,
unlike those for the County of Somerset, exhibit no sign of
multiplication by fission. We see them meeting, ten or twenty
in number, always as a single Court, regularly at Canterbury in
" General Sessions " ; at first in the Archbishop's Palace, and
afterwards at the municipal Guildhall, three times a year ; and
in " Special Sessions " occasionally at the principal taverns of
the city. As in Somerset, there are Standing Juries, who were,
for a long time, not summoned by the Sheriff " from the body of
the County," but served practically for life, appointed by the
1 MS. Minutes, Commissioners of Sewers of East Kent, 8th Juno 1710. This
fill into abeyance in 1732, when the inhabitants opposed the tax; and the
Court I -t it drop. In 1828 the question was again raised, and the Corporation
agreed to do the Qecessary work, if the Commissioners would contribute some-
thing (ihi<l. 22nd May, and 2nd and 4th June L828).
2 As to opening the sluices, ibid. 24th April 1707; as to the weeds, ibid.
1st May L690, 3rd June 1708. "Upon complaint made to this Court of the
Beveral millers <>f . . . in suffering the weeds to pass through their several
mills, whereby it becomes very prejudicial to the valleys below, it is ordered
that the said several millers do eause the said weeds to be drawn out before
t hev do pass through their respective mills, upon penalty of forty shillings, etc."
{ibid 1st May 1690).
THE STANDING JURIES 47
Court " during the Court's pleasure " one by one, as vacancies
occurred by death or otherwise ; and periodically resworn in a
body, at the session at which the new Commission was read. 1
These Standing Juries, evidently composed of local farmers, went
about in twos and threes, " viewing " streams and sluices, and
making presentments to the Court. 2 We may suspect them of
being, like other similar Sewers Juries, older than the Commis-
sioners to whom they came to be subordinate, but of this, in
East Kent, we have no actual evidence. At the end of the
seventeenth century we find existing one such " Jury of the
General Valleys," whatever these may have been, and between
twenty and thirty other Juries for particular " Valleys," as the
local districts or " levels " seem to have been called.
It is interesting to notice that one juryman from each Jury,
and only one, was required or allowed to be in attendance at the
sessions of the Court, 3 a fact which reminds us of the representa-
tion by the " Chief Pledge " of the other members of his tithing. 4
Presently, in 1713, some one raises the question as to the status
of these Juries ; and when the Commissioners take counsel's
opinion, they are advised to get the Sheriff to summon the Juries.
From 1713, accordingly, the Sheriff of the County of Kent has to
be requested every decade, when a new Commission is obtained,
by means of a special journey of the Clerk which costs thirty
shillings, to go through the form of summoning a Jury from the
body of the County. He does this for a guinea fee ; 5 and the
Sheriff of the City of Canterbury does the same for the Jury for
that " County Corporate." But it is a matter of form only. The
old jurymen are nominated to the Sheriff, as each Commission
comes to the end of its term, for him to summon the same person
to serve for another decade. 6 The Juries thus remain Standing
Juries, not of " indifferent persons " charged to return a verdict
on a particular case, but permanently composed of the very
1 MS. Minutes, Commissioners of Sewers of East Kent, 12th October 1699,
13th October 1715, 31st May 1716, 20th June 1717.
2 Usually only signed by two Jurymen (ibid. 24th April 1718).
3 Ibid. 27th April 1693. There was, it should be explained, an allowance
for dinner. The Expenditor designated the Juryman who was to appear, and
the duty was not to be imposed on a man more than once in a twelvemonth.
4 The Manor and the Borough, pp. 22, 23.
6 MS. Minutes, Commissioners of Sewers, East Kent, 15th October 1713,
6th October 1739.
6 Ibid. 28th April 1715, 8th April 1725, 8th October 1757, 8th April
1758.
48 THE COURT OF SEWERS
persons whose lands and interests are concerned ; really local
bodies of subordinate administrators. 1
There was evidently an extensive and well-understood series
of obligations on particular lands, probably of immemorial
usage, to keep in good order the portions of the sluices, walls and
embankments on the several holdings, and to " repair their
several defects." 2 Sometimes the owners and occupiers them-
selves were ordered to restore particular embankments and
sea-walls, each apparently being responsible for the portion on his
own land. 3 We see the Municipal Corporation of Sandwich
held responsible for keeping in repair the walls and embankments
within that Borough ; and the Mayor and Jurats are hauled over
the coals by the Commissioners for also neglecting to cleanse the
stream by " coffining." 4 But the main instruments for executing
works were the Expenditors. The Court appointed, not only a
Bailiff and " General Expenditor," as well as a Clerk to the
Commissioners, but also an Expenditor for each of the Valleys ;
choosing apparently from among two names submitted every
second year by the jurymen of each Valley at the Easter session
of the Court. 5 It was the Expenditors, who seem to have been
paid about thirty shillings a year each, who were blamed for
" not looking after the sluice and for not cleansing . . . the
stream." 6 It was usually the Expenditors who were ordered
to execute works — to cleanse away " the foulness of Black well
Dyke " ; to " cause the weeds of the Little River to be drawn out
betwixt this and Midsummer next " ; to drag the Great Stour
1 In 1738 counsel's opinion was again taken, the advice being that there
should be a Jury of at least 24 persons summoned by the Sheriff, for continuous
service during the whole decade ; and that their presentments should be made
by at least twelve of them (MS. Minutes, Commissioners of Sewers, East Kent,
7th October 1738). This advice was acted upon until 1823, when the decision
in R. v. Commissioners of Sewers for the County of Somerset upset the practice
(ibid. 1 Itli June 1823; 22nd May 1828). The "views" and presentments of
the Juries, with the attendances of the Expenditors, and their dining together,
and the engrossing of the " inquisitions " became expensive — in one case running
up to *.l7s : r ): 4 (ibid. 6th October L759).
2 Ibid. 29th April 1693, 24th April 1707, 16th October 1719. Tho occupiers
in one case arc ordered to '* make up the Lowes on each side of the Barreways "
(ibid. 23rd May 1696).
3 " Upon complaint, this day made . . . for the not repairing of a certain
wall in HaekliiiLr's Land . . . which if not speedily done will endanger the
overflowing of BeveraJ lands then' . . . ordered that the owners or occupiers
. . . do sufficiently amend the said wall," etc. (ibid, llth June 1691).
4 Ibid. Ii'th October L699, 28th April and llth dun.' 1750.
5 Ibid. 1st May 1701. • Ibidm 7th April 1092.
" LANDS DOUBLE-SCOTTED " 49
with an iron harrow to prevent the accumulation of weeds ; 1 to
erect a new penstock in a sewer ; 2 to repair immediately any
breaches in the sea-wall, even to the extent of advancing " fifty
or sixty pounds towards the said work " ; 3 to " lay a gut " or
" set down a new sluice " ; 4 or to clear away the weeds in the
" Canterbury River " 5 The accounts of all the Expenditors
were annually allowed by the Court. The Court granted to the
Expenditors, and thereby imposed on the owners and occupiers,
not only an annual general " scot " or rate, usually at sixpence
or a shilling per acre, but also special or extra " scots," and, in
addition, local " scots " or " half scots " of from twopence to
two shillings per acre, on particular " valleys " or districts. 6
We find the Court deciding, in 1689, that of these " scots " the
occupiers shall pay two-thirds and the landowners one-third. 7
Occasionally two-thirds of the expense would be charged on the
occupiers of particular lands, and one- third put to " the general
charge of the Valley." 8
We gather from the records that the Commissioners and the
jurymen jogged along year after year, all on the best of terms
with themselves and the rest of the owners and occupiers, taking
their fees, levying their scots, and amicably dining together,
with the very minimum of compulsion, on the basis of common
consent. The Court occasionally legislated for the common good
in the form of prohibiting novel nuisances. 9
It was usual to obtain the consent of the landowners and
farmers concerned before ordering any new works. In 1775,
however, an unusual emergency arose. An expert surveyor
from the Bedford Level was called in to advise how to remedy
the steadily worsening condition of the Stour Valley, which was
1 MS. Minutes, Commissioners of Sewers, East Kent, 1st May 1690.
2 Ibid. 19th June 1690. 3 Ibid. 13th December 1690.
4 Ibid. 23rd April 1691, 19th April and 7th June 1694.
5 Ibid. 12th October 1693, " Ordered that none are to empty tubs or houses
of office into Canterbury River upon penalty of forty shillings" (ibid. 11th
October 1694, 11th June 1696).
6 " A scot of fifteen pence per acre on the lands single scotted, and half
a crown on the lands double-scotted, to T. S., Expenditor, by special order "
(ibid. 30th October 1690). These occasional impositions were transformed, in
1827, into a regular annual tax, for the general expenses of the Court, of two-
pence per acre and twopence in the pound on the rent (ibid. 31st May 1827).
7 Ibid. 30th October 1689. 8 Ibid. 26th May 1692, 6th June 1757.
9 " Ordered that if any person shall water any flax in any heading, dike,
sewer or stream, he shall for every such offence forfeit the sum of five pounds "
(ibid. 15th October 1713).
E
50 THE COURT OF SEWERS
getting annually more water-logged. The expert recommended
" a new cut," for which statutory authority was required. 1
There was (as usual with river drainage works) vehement argu-
ment for and against " the new cut " ; but in the end it is
resolved upon. 2 Accordingly, in 1776, the Commissioners, having
obtained general consent from the landowners, fortified them-
selves by a Local Act, passed " after a very strong and tedious
opposition from the inhabitants of Sandwich " ; upon which
they borrowed £2400, with which to pay the costs of the Act, and
to execute the necessary w r orks of improvement of the River
Stour. 3 The operation seems to have been a somewhat primitive
one. The " Expenditor of the General Valleys " was authorised
to take on as many men as he required for the work, at Is. 9d.
each per day ; the day's work, it is interesting to note, was
expressly ordered to be eight hours ; and the " proper person
to superintend " was to get 2s. 6d. per day. 4 How " the new
cut " acted we know not, but there are for over fifty years no
more complaints.
We need not follow the Commissioners further in their har-
monious proceedings. The only point of interest is the report
by a committee of themselves in 1823, evidently acting on legal
advice, that there was now reason to believe, from the recent
decision against the Somerset Court of Sewers, that the very
: ' foundation and proceedings " of their Jury system were illegal,
and accordingly that the whole action of the Court was, strictly
speaking, null and void. It was deemed necessary to give up
the immemorial Standing Jury, and to ask the Sheriff to summon
a Jury each time that a presentment was required, or at any rate,
one for each session of the Court. The Jury so sworn had hence-
forth to decide, not upon their own view and knowledge, but
solely upon the evidence of witnesses in open Court. There
could no longer be a separate Jury for each Valley ; and the same
formal procedure had to be followed by the Jury even for the
granting of a "scot." 5 The "constant service of the antique
1 IMS. Minute-. Commissioners of Sewers, East Kent, 2'MU April and 26th
May 177."..
" Ibid. 26th August, 28th September and 26th October 177."..
3 Ibid. 8th February and 3rd June L776. 4 Ibid. 6th July L776.
5 Ibid. 25th Ootober L823, and 22nd January 1826. A separate Jury bad
to be summoned by the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports for the area within
his jurisdiction, as well as one by the Sheriff of the City of Canterbury for that
city.
LINCOLNSHIRE 51
world," which the Courts of Sewers had continued so long, was
now passing away. Once scrutinised by critical eyes, there was
revealed much in the procedure — as we suspect, of immemorial
antiquity — for which no warrant could be found in the compara-
tively modern Statutes of Sewers or King's Commissions. In
East Kent, however, the work itself was now passing from the
Commissioners' hands. A joint stock company, empowered to
levy tolls on the navigation, took up the task of rehandling
the whole course of the Stour and improving Sandwich Harbour.
The Commissioners strongly opposed the Bill, but came at last
to terms, on protective clauses being inserted. 1 The Act was
passed in 1825, and we leave the Court of Sewers at this date
steadily dwindling in importance.
Lincolnshire
How far there existed in other Counties any primitive com-
munal organisation for land drainage such as that we have de-
scribed in Romney Marsh and Somerset, and to what extent any
such organisation continued in existence under the practically
permanent Courts of Sewers established from the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries onward, we have but the scantiest informa-
tion. In the great County of Lincoln, with fens and marshes
needing protection on almost every side of it, we find existing
in the eighteenth century, after many specially commissioned
Justices of Sewers for the disputes of particular localities, a
single Commission of Sewers for the county as a whole, 2 which
1 MS. Minutes, Commissioners of Sewers, East Kent, 1st and 8th May and
11th December 1824, 8th January and 19th March 1825.
2 For the Lincolnshire Court of Sewers we have to rely entirely on the
material afforded by secondary sources such as The History of Imbanking and
Draining, by Sir William Dugdale, 1652, edition of 1772 ; General View of the
Agriculture of the County of Lincoln, by Arthur Young, 1799 ; The Rainfall,
Water Supply and Drainage of Lincolnshire, by W. H. Wheeler, 1879 ; History
of the Fens of South Lincolnshire, by W. H. Wheeler, 1894 and 1896 ; Fens and
Floods of Mid-Lincolnshire, by J. S. Padley, 1882 ; History and Antiquities of
Boston, by P. Thompson, 1856 ; History and Antiquities of the Isle of Axholme,
by Rev. W. B. Stonehouse, 1839 ; History and Topography of the Deanery of
Doncaster, by J. Hunter, 1828-1832 ; History of the County of Lincoln, by T. Allen,
1834 ; Lives of the Engineers, by Samuel Smiles, 1861 ; Victoria County History
of Lincolnshire ; Memorials of Old Lincolnshire, by E. M. Sympson, 1910 ;
Glossary of Words, etc. . . . East Lincolnshire, by J. Good, 1911 ; Highways and
Byeways in Lincolnshire, by W. F. Rawnsley, 1914 ; and others mentioned in
Bibliotheca Lincolniensis, by A. R. Corus, 1904 ; and such pamphlets as South
Holland Drainage Acts of Parliament, 1846 ; Proceedings of the Committee
52 THE COURT OF SEWERS
has continued down to the present day, though from its juris-
diction the areas administered under Local Acts by special
bodies have always been regarded as excluded, either implicitly
or by express provision in their Acts. 1 But, as in Somerset-
shire, the Lincolnshire Court of Sewers has, time out of mind,
taken what we must call an extra-legal form. We see the
Commissioners dividing themselves into groups, according to the
locality of their properties, and holding regularly several separate
Courts, at Boston, Spalding and other places, each exercising
jurisdiction only over a particular district, comprising one or
more Wapentakes or Hundreds, and each attended, in practice,
only by its own set of Commissioners. 2 Judging simply from the
legal documents, it might be assumed that these Courts of Sewers,
with the assistance of a Jury summoned by the Sheriff of the
County, did the whole of the work. We gather, however, that
there were during the eighteenth century, as at the present day,
many local Juries, with diverse local customs, though how
far these resembled the Standing Juries of Somersetshire, or
the Juries for particular " Valleys " in East Kent, we have
not ascertained. 3 More prominent in Lincolnshire — perhaps
specially characteristic of that county — were the Dykereeves,
evidently ancient officers of the Parish or Manor, upon whom,
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, fell the daily
work of administration of the banks and sluices. Of these local
Appointed to confer with the lessees of the Fossdyke Navigation, etc., 1827 ;
Statement of the Proceedings . . . to promote the Improvement of the . . . Drain-
age of the Lowlands . . . bordering upon the Louth Navigation, 1830, etc. Public
Works in Mediaeval Law, by C. T. Flower, Selden Society, 1915, contains
(pp. 218-316) 98 pages of ancient records relating to the maintenance of sewers,
bridges and roads in South Lincolnshire.
1 History of the Fens of South Lincolnshire, by W. H. Wheeler, 1896, p. 56.
2 " The members have the right of attending and voting at any of the Courts,
a privilege which is sometimes taken advantage of on important occasions, or
when the appointment of a clerk or other officer is made. As a rule, however,
the members confine their attendances to the Court which has jurisdiction
over the neighbourhood in which they reside " (ibid, p. 56).
3 We read of "a Dykereeve's Inquest," near Spalding, in 1571, when the
Foreman of the Jury delivered a memorable verdict ".setting out the various
sewers and banks maintainable by the parishes, and . . . that the sea bank
. . . ought to be amended by the landholders by 'acre silver,' and that the
inhabitants for their passage thereon should make common ' menework ' " (or
oompulsory day labour) (ibid. p. 103). "A couple of centuries later, in tho
Kirton and Skirbeck Wapentakes a Riding Jury used annually to make an
inspection of the seabanks and works of drainage, and report to tho Court as
to any defects. They were allowed 10/- per day for horse hire and expenses in
their Wapentake, and 14/- if they attended out of it " (ibid. p. 48).
DYKEREEVES 53
officers, and of the local customs that they enforced, we hear
incidentally already in the thirteenth century. In 1297, as
Dugdale records, " upon a suit concerning the repair of the
ditches and sewers of Waynflete the jurors found that the custom
of that town was such that the ditches there ought to be cleansed
once a year . . . and that every inhabitant thereof, having
lands there, ought to be assessed and taxed according to the
quantity of his lands, to contribute to the charge of such cleansing
and scouring of them. And . . . that the money . . . ought,
according to the said custom, to be levied and collected by certain
of the inhabitants of the said town called Dykereeves, and not
by any others." 1 " As often as the sewers there made for the
draining of their lands did want repair," as appears from another
record, " they ought to be viewed by the commonalty of that
place ; and . . . thereupon every person having lands and
tenements there ought to be assessed for the repair of those
sewers according to the proportion of his said lands." 2 In the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it is clear, such obligations
of the landholders of each little community were enforced in the
Lord's Court. " Such was the custom," we are told, " in that
town of North Waynflete that certain of the inhabitants thereof
were assigned to view the marsh ditches, therein, every year on
1 History of Imbanlcing and Draining, by Sir William Dugdale, 1652, p. 154
of edition of 1772. Edmund Oldfield, in his Account of Wainfleet and the
Wapentake of Candleshoe, 1829, " quotes from Dugdale's work on embankments
an account of a . . . suit ... in which the defendant set out the custom
prevalent in North Wainfleet as to the repair of the sewers, which was to be
regulated by the view and assessment of the commonalty, and that it was also
the custom to view the marsh-ditches yearly on the feast of St. Andrew, and to
present defaults to the Court of the Earl of Lincoln, who could impose a fine
of sixteen pence " (Public Works in Mediaeval Law, by C. T. Flower, Selden
Society, 1915, p. 287).
2 History of Imbanking and Draining, by Sir William Dugdale, 1652,
p. 155. We may perhaps identify with the Dykereeves the " two lawful
persons " assigned to levy the Marsh Rate for Kentish marshes in a Com-
mission of 1290. They are specially mentioned by name in various Com-
missions of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries preserved in Sir William
Dugdale's History of Imbanking and Draining, for places in Kent (p. 37),
Norfolk (pp. 275, 290), and Cambridgeshire (pp. 316, 344) ; whilst in Essex we
hear of Wallreeves as manorial officers. In 1824 we find the Somerset Court
of Sewers apparently adopting the same officers for certain parishes. " At
this sessions " certain " Standing Juries were discharged, and Dykereeves
appointed and sworn to inspect, oversee and take care of the several works
heretofore within the view of such Juries (MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners,
Somerset, Bridgwater, 8th October 1824). We have found in East Kent no
trace of Dykereeves, or of any other parochial or manorial officers connected
with the sewers.
54 THE COURT OF SEWERS
the Feast Day of St. Andrew, and to present the defaults which
they should find in them at the next Court of Henry de Lacy,
Earl of Lincoln, then Lord of that town ; and that every tenant
of that Lordship who ought to make any repairs thereto be
amerced in 16d. at the said Court." 1 Such scanty information as
we possess of the actual administration in the eighteenth century
of the Lincolnshire works of local drainage points to the con-
tinuance, practically unchanged, of these thirteenth - century
customs. Though by the wording of the Commission and of the
Statute of Sewers it was for the Commissioners to appoint all the
officers, and assess all the rates, " the ordinary course of pro-
ceeding in this district," we are told, " is for each parish to
appoint two officers called Dykereeves to lay and collect the
necessary rates and maintain the banks and sewers ; and these
appointments, and all that relates to them, are subject to the
approval of the Court." 2 Whether this approval of the Com-
missioners was more than a form we have not ascertained. What
is clear is that the inhabitants in Vestry assembled not only
appointed the Dykereeves, but also controlled their expenditure.
" The Dykereeves," we learn, " present their accounts to the
Vestry of the parish at Easter." 3
1 For information as to Wainfleet, see History of the Fens of South Lincolnshire,
by VV. H. Wheeler, 1896, pp. 76, 77. In Marshland in Norfolk we hear, in 1337,
of "the penalty of Bylaw, which is for every _perch sixpence," fur those who
neglect to repair the banks on the days assigned by the Dykereeves. " All Un-
tenants and commoners in Watlington should meet twice in the year, and hold
the customs of Marshland " (History of Imbanking and Draining, by Sir William
Dugdalc, 1052, p. 290 of edition of 1772). In many other places the obligation
to keep in repair a definite piece of river wall or length of sewer, usually that
abutting on or traversing the land held, was enforced on the tenants of a Manor
l>\ the ordinary procedure of the Court Leet ; see, for instance, a Lincolnshire
case of 1410 in History of the Parish of Ormsby, by W. O. Massingbird, 1899,
p. 275 ; Growth of the Manor, by P. Vinogradoff, 1905, p. 269. We are told, in
! 32-1, of the origin of such a custom in the marsh of Stepney or Poplar. It was
Found by an inquisition of 18 Edward II. that a previous Lord of the Manor had
demised over one hundred acres of reclaimed land to tenants, each under the
obligation to maintain his own bit of river wall. Two Wallreeves were annually
appointed at the Manorial Court, whose duty was to warn the tenants to repair,
and to present defaults. No rate was levied until 1401, when the Court of
King's liench held that every tenant in the marsh was liable, in addition to his
individual obligation, to contribute towards the works rendered necessary by a
great inroad of the tide (History of Imbanking and Draining, by Sir William
Dugdale, 1652, p. 69 of edition of 1772).
2 History of the Fens if South Lincolnshire, by W. H. Wheeler, 1896, p. 48.
3 Ibid. p. 48. During the greater part of the eighteenth century — in some
places righl down to the nineteenth century — where the marshes remained
unenclosed, and unallotted in severalty, their use as common pasture neces-
ACRESHOT 55
The Lincolnshire sewers were divided into two classes,
possibly according to their antiquity : those which were main-
tained by the frontagers or other owners, and those which were
a charge on the " Dykereeves' Rate " or " acreshot," assessed
according to the " acrebook " of the parish. 1 We infer that,
as in Somersetshire, the function of the Courts of Sewers in
Lincolnshire was principally the exercise of a general super-
intendence over some such local communal organisation 2 as
Juries and Dykereeves ; to maintain it in efficiency by compel-
ling service ; to arbitrate between it and recalcitrant owners or
occupiers, and to confer legal authority upon its ordainments
and amercements, in substitution for the Manorial Courts. 3
sarily led to communal regulation. Most of this was parochial or manorial.
" Before being sent into the common fen, the live stock were collected at
certain denned places and marked, and again, on being taken off in the autumn
they were brought to the same place to be claimed by their owners. Thus in
Pinchbeck the stock was collected at the Market Cross and a due called Hoven
was paid. Bailiffs were appointed to look after the stock. On the marshes
in South Holland a ' Marsh Reeve ' was also appointed, and a ' Marsh Shepherd,'
their wages being paid by a rate of Is. 6d. for each horse and neat beast, and 3d.
for each sheep grazed on the common " {History of the Fens of South Lincolnshire,
by W. H. Wheeler, 1896, p. 38, and Appendix I. p. 30). These appointments
were continued to be made by the Vestry until the enclosure in 1793 (p. 122).
There was necessarily a great deal of " intercommoning," and the Council of the
Duchy of Lancaster, as lords of most of the district, drew up an elaborate code
of 72 articles, which was settled at the Great Incpiest of the Soke of Bolingbroke
in 1549, and confirmed in 1573. This Fen Code, relating to the marking and
commoning of cattle, the taking of fish, fowl, eggs, turf and fodder, the dates
on which reeds might be cut, etc., remained in force until, in our own day, the
last of the common lands were enclosed and allotted in severalty. See History
and Antiquities of Boston, by P. Thompson, 1856, pp. 642-644 ; History of the
Fens of South Lincolnshire, by W. H. Wheeler, 1896, pp. 36-38; Public Works
in Mediaeval Law, by C. T. Flower (Selden Society, 1915), p. 282.
1 History of the Fens of South Lincolnshire, by W. H. Wheeler, 1896, pp. 61,
141. At Fishtoft, for instance, " acrebooks " were made in 1662, 1709 and
1733 (History and Antiquities of Boston, by P. Thompson, 1856, p. 493). For
" acreshot " see History of Imbanlcing and Draining, by Sir William Dugdale,
p. 348 of edition of 1772.
2 It is perhaps of some importance in this connection to note that the
Lincolnshire Fenland " has never been dominated by any large territorial
owners " (History of the Fens of South Lincolnshire, by W. H. Wheeler, 1S96,
p. 421). " In the Fen parishes," in 1799, " half " the land belonged to small
peasant freeholders (General View of the Agriculture of the County of Lincoln,
by Arthur Young, 1799).
3 Occasionally (as at Frampton in 1754) the Court would order lands lying
in one parish, but draining into another, to pay the Dykereeves' Rate to the
latter parish, instead of to their own (History of the Fens of South Lincolnshire,
by W. H. Wheeler, 1896, pp. 69, 82). We notice a persistent tendency for
the charge of maintaining particular works to be transferred, by order of the
Court, from particular owners to the Dvkereeves' Rate (for instance, see ibid.
p. 73).
56 THE COURT OF SEWERS
When any works of magnitude were undertaken, a surveyor was
apparently employed by the Court and charged as part of the
cost of the work, which was levied by the Court as a Sewers
Rate. In 1810, when an exceptionally high tide flooded the
whole of one great " level " the Court of Sewers sitting at Boston,
acting on the opinion of eminent counsel, " spread the charge
over the whole level of the Wapentakes of Skirbeck and Kirton,"
and in that case the Court proceeded strictly according to the
Statute of Sewers, not calling upon the Dykereeves or the stand-
ing local Juries, but getting the Sheriff of the county to summon
a Jury of indifferent persons for each Wapentake, by whom
" the extent of land liable, and the proportion in which the
money required should be paid " were judicially assessed, at
rates per acre varying from Is. 2d. to 10s. 1 For the most part
the cost of repairs and works were, throughout the eighteenth
century, borne by particular owners or frontagers, and only the
minor expenses of cleaning the ditches, maintaining the sluices
and keeping down the vermin were paid by the Dykereeves out
of the " acreshot." Occasionally, with the consent of the local
Vestries and usually of all parties concerned, we see the Court
accepting and endorsing a presentment, by which an exceptional
work is made a charge over the whole parish, and the Dykereeves
are ordered to collect Sewers Rate accordingly, sometimes at
differential rates for lands more or less benefited. 2 " For the
general expenses of the Court," which were, throughout the
eighteenth century, inconsiderable, the Court made an order
" on the Dykereeves of the several parishes," in some customary
proportion. 3
We may add here that the rural Courts of Sewers, together
with the Lords of the Level of Romney Marsh and the Corpora-
tion of the Bedford Level, and unlike the Courts of Sewers of
the Metropolitan area, about to be described, continue in existence
down to the present day (1922). No revolution like that of the
Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, or the Poor Law Amend-
ment Act of 1834, has swept them away ; nor have they, like
1 History of the Fens of South Lincolnshire, by W. If. Wheeler, 1890, pp. 49,
02-66. The Court sat on the Sunday following the catastrophe (Huston Gazette,
13th November 1810).
2 History of the Fens of South Lincolnshire, by W. II. Wheeler, 1896, p. 50.
In 1715, on presentment by a .Tiny, the Court directed a new outfall alnioe to
be made into the Welland (ibid. p. K4).
3 Ibid. p. is.
COURTS WITHIN THE METROPOLITAN AREA 57
the Turnpike Trustees or the Improvement Commissioners, been
absorbed by newer authorities. 1
Metropolitan Courts of Sewers
For one long stretch of marsh and low-lying lands — as it
happens the most important district of all — we are fortunate
enough to have had access to nearly complete records for the
last three centuries. The 118 square miles along the banks of
the Thames, which are now under the jurisdiction of the London
County Council, were formerly divided among eight separate
Courts of Sewers, the minutes of the proceedings of which exist,
in some cases, from 1569. 2 It fortunately happens that these
1 At the present time, we understand that Commissions of Sewers are issued
by the Crown on the advice of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, which
has succeeded to the Enclosure Commissioners. The procedure is that a
petition is presented to the Board, and, after approval, it is communicated to
the Home Office. The Home Secretary, with the approval of the Crown, then
instructs the Clerk of the Crown to prepare a warrant for the issue of Letters
Patent under the Land Drainage Act of 1861. Once appointed, the Com-
missioners of Sewers are not subject to the control of any Government Depart-
ment, except that they have to obtain the sanction of the Board of Agriculture
for raising loans, the compulsory acquisition of land and the commutation of
any liabilities. They have, however, to forward their accounts to the Local
Government Board (now Ministry of Health). The Crown, acting through the
Home Secretary, could probably supersede or suppress any Commission of
Sewers by writ of supersedeas in accordance with the Statute of Sewers of 1532 ;
and it was, in fact, in this way that (as mentioned below) the Metropolitan
Commissions of Sewers were brought to an end. In effect, however, a Com-
mission of Sewers can, in its ordinary administration, be controlled by pro-
ceedings upon the motion of private individuals in the High Court of Justice,
which would act by certiorari and mandamus, prohibition and injunction, as
with other public officers or bodies (see " Notes on the Constitution and Records
of Commissioners of Sewers," by H. G. Richardson, in Report of Royal Com-
mission on Public Records, vol. ii. part ii. pp. 98-100).
2 These records, amounting to "about 4250 separate volumes, sheets or
rolls," extending from 1569 to 1855, are now preserved by the London County
Council, which at one time intended to publish some of the earlier volumes and
should certainly do so. One volume only appears to have been published, entitled
Court Minutes of the Surrey and Kent Sewer Commission, London County Council,
1909, vol. i. Minutes, 1569-1579, 352 pp. Apart from this full material, sources
of information for the Metropolitan Commissions of Sewers are exceptionally
few. The student will consult the Acts, and also the Digest of the Statutes
relating to the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers ; The Law of Waters and of
Sewers, by Humphrey W. Woolrych, 1830 ; the reports and evidence of the
House of Commons Committees of 1823 and 1834 ; the House of Commons
Returns of 1831 and 1847 (No. 686) ; the first report and evidence of the
Metropolitan Sanitary Commission, 1847 ; a valuable paper " On the Main
Drainage of London," by (Sir) J. W. Bazalgette, in Proceedings of the Institute
of Civil Engineers, vol. xxiv., 1865 ; with the incidental references in the Poor
58 THE COURT OF SEWERS
eight Courts of Sewers include, as we believe, representatives of
every type presented by these authorities outside the Fenland.
The long succession of marshes that once stretched from the
Mole to the Medway exhibit, in fact, the most diverse conditions,
and have had the most varied history. The Commissioners of
Sewers who acted for these miles of riparian marshland had to
deal with the storms of the sea and exceptional tides ; they had
also to cope with the morasses created by stagnant accumulations
of the rain-water from the uplands ; they had in many places
to administer the earthen embankments and sluices of wholly
uninhabited marshes ; and in others the sewers of densely
crowded streets of houses and the walls and camp-shedding of
river landing-places and commercial wharves.
Greenwich
We begin with the Commissioners of Sewers for the marshes
extending on the Kentish bank of the Thames from the mouth
of the Ravensbourne (including the site of the ancient village
of Greenwich) down to as far as the Borough of Gravesend. In
the constitution and procedure of the rulers of these marshes we
find surviving, right down to Victorian times, much of the
ancient organisation of Romney Marsh. : ' Before the 23rd of
Henry the Eighth," we are told, " the government of this Level
was entirely in the owners of the land, who acted under the
ancient customs of the town of Greenwich." x We gather that
the owners of the marsh elected a body of Jurats, a Bailiff, and
one or more Collectors, whilst the larger proprietors were deputed
Law Commissioners' Report on the Sanitary Conditio:: of the Labouring Population,
isli' ; Old Southwark, by W. Rendle, 1878; English Sanitary Institutions, by
Sir John Simon, 1890 ; History of Private Bill Legislation, by F. Clifford, L887 ;
The Sanitary Evolution of London, by H. Jephson, 1907 ; and Municipal Origins,
by P. II. Spencer, 1911, ]>[>. 242-263. A few local pamphlets and other sources
will be found mentioned in connection with the several Co in missions. We do
imt include among ('units of Sewers the so-called Commissioners of Sewers for
the City of London, established under various Statutes, which was. down to
1897, annually appointed by the Common Council. This body did not act
under the Statutes of Sewers ami had no judicial authority; it was, in fact.
virtually a Committee of the Corpora) ion of the City of London, and has already
been described as such [The Manor and tin Borough, 1908, pp 677-646); whilst
il exercised the usual powers of a body of Improvement or Street Commissioners,
including drainage (see The Manor and the Borough, 1908, |>. r>77. and post, pp.
347-348).
' MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Greenwich, 24th March 1744,
GREENWICH
59
in rotation to serve the office of Expenditor. 1 We need not
attempt to unravel the changes brought about by the issue of
successive Commissions of Sewers in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, except to notice that even after the issue of
these Commissions the landowners of the marsh continued, as
we are expressly informed, to assess " the wallscot themselves
and acted by the virtue of their local customs " ; and that in
1624 the jurisdiction of the Commissioners of Sewers of. East
Greenwich, with whom we are now concerned, was limited to
the portion of the marsh that lay between the Ravensbourne
and the Lombard Wall. 2 ( In 1689, when we take up the story,
the Commissioners were the leading landed proprietors of the
neighbourhood, who, once a year, met ceremoniously as a Court
of Sewers, with all the forms and paraphernalia of a judicial
tribunal. If we were to judge by the wording of the Commission
itself, or by that of the Statute of Sewers under which the Court
acted, we should infer that the whole work was done, and the
whole power wielded, by the Commissioners themselves. But
the records make it clear that the ancient organisation had never
ceased to exist, and we find it, with only the slightest of changes,
continuing to function under the aegis of the relatively modern
Court of Sewers. 3 The practical work was done by the Jurats,
now called the Jury ; and by the Expenditor, combining in
himself, since 1657, the powers and duties of the three ancient
offices of " Bailiff, Collector and Expenditor." 4 In the volumes
1 See the incidental references to these Thames marshes in the History of
Imbanking and Draining, by Sir William Dugdale, 1652, pp. 59-65 of edition
of 1772.
2 MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Greenwich, 27th March 1744.
3 Even the oath taken by the Expenditor continued, down to 1738, to run
in the archaic form, alluding to the " wallscot " as being assessed by the owners
of the marsh, instead of by the Commissioners of Sewers (ibid. 24th March
1744). It is significant that, as late as 1690, the summons to this Court was
issued by the " Bailiff, Collector and Expenditor ... by virtue of his office
and according to the ancient custom, and by the consent of their Majesties'
Commissioners of Sewers " ; that it is not called a Court but " the General
Lathe " ; and that it is not summoned to try pleas or offenders, but "... to
do and perform what shall be thought fit for the weal and good of the said
Marshes " (ibid. 4th September 1690). The ancient " books, rolls and other
papers relating to the Marshes " were, in 1696, not in the custody of the Com-
missioners but in the " church chest," whence they were then reclaimed (ibid.
20th November 1696).
4 Ibid. 6th January 1698. Not until 1699 was this officer appointed by
any " warrant, commission or some such like instrument as is the custom
amongst Commissioners ... in other Levels " (ibid. 2nd October 1699).
60 THE COURT OF SEWERS
of manuscript minutes in which the proceedings have been, since
1625, elaborately recorded, the daily working of this constitution
may easily be followed down to 1835, at which point we leave
the story. The Expenditor remains throughout nominally
unpaid, the office devolving in turn upon the principal land-
owners of the Marsh, whether these are men or women, adults
or minors, residents or absentees, individuals or corporations. 1
But the office was habitually served by the appointment of a
paid deputy, at a salary of no more than £4 a year, 2 whose main
business was to collect from the fifty or sixty freeholders of the
marsh the amount per acre assessed by the Jury on their respect-
ive holdings — making, if need be, distraint on any goods belong-
ing to them or any of their tenants 3 — and to pay, after a certifi-
cate of completion by the Jury, for the work that had been
ordered to be done. But in the eighteenth and nineteenth, as
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it was the body of
jurats or jurors that constituted the mainspring of the whole
machinery. They were now returned by the High Sheriff of the
County at the opening of each new Commission, instead of
holding office by election or in virtue of their tenure of certain
lands or Manors ; and they served, not for life, but continuously
for at least ten years. They were, however, always composed
not of indifferent persons from the body of the county, but of
forty-eight of the peasant freeholders and tenant farmers of
lands within the Marsh, and we gather that many of them acted
decade after decade ; whilst their Foreman, whose presence was
necessary to give validity to their proceedings, in one instance
at any rate filled that office for a whole generation. In any
emergency the Foreman could himself call together the Jury —
perhaps he always did so — and we see him collecting some of
1 So strict was the rotation, and so compulsory the service, that wc find
the Board of Ordnance (MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Greenwich, 2Gth
November 1708) and the Commissioners of Customs required to accept the office
when it fell to the turn of the lands held by their departments; and when in
1704, the obligation came to some land which had come to be possessed by Queen
Anne herself (having been seized for a debt to the Crown), no exception was
made in her favour (ibid. 28th September 1704). This compulsion to serve the
office of Kxpenditor was not peculiar to the Greenwich Court of Sewers. But
we find it determined in Chamber's case (Andrew 335) and in the Vicar of
Dart ford's case in 1739, that the incumbent of a parish was not liable to serve
in reaped of his benefice ( /.'« port of Adjudged Cases, by Sir John Strange, 3rd
edition, 17!);"), vol. ii. |>. 1107; and the other authorities there cited).
- .MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Greenwich, 20th November 1606,
3 Ibid, 6th .January Hi'.'s.
THE JURY 61
the members to aid him with their counsel. Twice a year, in
spring and autumn, the whole body gathered at daybreak at
some appointed place, whence the members dispersed in separate
detachments, attended by the Wallreeve and the Sluice-keepers,
to walk the whole length of the embankments and river walls,
in order to scrutinise their soundness, and the amount of nettles
and brambles by which they were overgrown. We see them, in
the grey morning mists characteristic of the Thames estuary,
following up the sluices and dykes that extended for miles
towards the higher lands, in order to discover which needed
scouring or repairing. Towards the afternoon they assemble
at one of the taverns of the village of Greenwich, to discuss over
their dinner " the due execution of last year's ordainments, as
also what is necessary to be done for the weal and good of the
Level for the year next ensuing." x At this convivial meeting,
under the presidency of the Foreman, they decided the number
and tenor of their presentments ; whether these were to be
" public " or " private " ; and in the latter case, upon which
owners lay the obligation to execute the necessary works ; the
date before which such repairs must be completed, and the fine
to be levied by the Court in case of default. Where the pre-
sentment was " public," that is when no particular owner could,
according to custom, be saddled with the necessary work, the
Jury proceeded to define precisely what was to be done, 2 together
with the estimated cost, to be formally levied as " wallscot " —
the lawyers would have said by the Court of Sewers when next
it should be held, but to the jurymen it seemed as if they levied
it themselves, at the customary differential rates between
" single " and " double " lands, exactly as their predecessors
had done for three or four centuries. 3 Their presentments —
1 Charge to Jury, MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Greenwich, 27th
October 1694.
2 Imprimis we do ordain 8 rods to be filled up against the " Great Meadow ;
charge 8s. ; we ordain the top of Bendiss sluice to be opened and the defects
thereof to be repaired and amended ; charge thereof £5 ; we ordain 4 rods to
be timbered there ; charge £5 ; ... we also ordain 5000 bavins, ethers and
stakes against the Pits, £3 ; 100 tons of chalk to be laid against Mr. Snap's
land, £8 : 15s. ; ... we ordain 100 load of gravel to be laid in the marsh
land ; charge £7 : 10s. ; we ordain the wall to be strewed with reeds ; charge £1 "
(ibid. 4th September 1690).
3 In 1690-1693 the average total expenditure per annum was about £200 ; and
the " wallscot " was ten shillings per acre on " Land Marsh " and five shillings
per acre on "Combe Marsh." In 1726, when the expenditure was £650, an extra
62 THE COURT OF SEWERS
called in fact, " ordainments " — were usually obeyed and the
works done, long before the next Court of Sewers was held, at
which they could be formally recorded. Once in a generation
we find them spending some days, or even weeks, in making, on
the model of such " tax-books or other ancient precedents " 1
as they could obtain, an elaborate new " assessment " of the
marsh, which here meant not a valuation, but, as in Lincolnshire,
an " acrebook " ; a detailed record and map of the exact
acreage, ownership and occupancy of each of the four or five
hundred separate holdings. For all this work the members of
the Jury received no pay, beyond an allowance for the customary
dinner. Throughout the whole period it is this convivial dinner
that binds the Jury together into an efficiently working body ;
and the Commissioners themselves, whom we find occasionally
grumbling at " the great or rather uncontrollable expense which
the Jury put this Commission into for their eating and drinking," 2
are inclined, on the whole, to take a generous view of the enter-
tainment. Amid the high prices of 1811, the jurymen success-
fully plead for a larger sum. They had already got the allowance
up successively from Is. 6d. to 4s. per head, but now found even
this insufficient. " We, the Jury of Sewers for the said Level,"
so runs their presentment to the Court, " beg leave to represent
that owing to the increased charge for every necessary of life,
the allowance now made by the Court of four shillings to each of
the jurymen per day on account of expenses is very inadequate
to the expenses unavoidably incurred, as the charge for a bare
plain dinner alone exceeds the allowance, without considering
anything for wine or other liquors usually drunk upon such
occasions, so that every juryman, besides giving up his time to
the benefit of the Level is, on every day of duty, put to a con-
siderable private cost." The Commissioners thereupon graciously
allowed eight shillings " for every day of walk or attendance on
Levy of twenty shillings per acre hail to be made. The levy was announced
immediately after service one Sunday at the Chapel of the Royal Sospital,
I Ireenwicb (MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Greenwich, 27th August 171(>).
On the opposite side of the Thames, in the Marshes of the Isle of Dogs the
ratr annually Levied during the eighteenth century was never less than four
shillings anil sometimes as inueh as eight shillings and sixpence pet acre (ibid.
Poplar, L690-1835).
1 Ibid. Greenwich, 7th November 1695; 24th March and 20th October
17 11, liMh October 17-J5 and 5th April 1746.
2 Ibid. 2nd June 172!).
THE DINNER OF THE JURY 63
the Court." l Later on, in a fit of economy, the Court cut down
the number of the Jury to fifteen, allowing them each ten shillings
a day. 2 But the jurymen resented this diminution of their
company. " The Foreman of the Jury represented that under
the arrangement made by the Court in May last he found great
difficulty in assembling a Jury, as the division thereby created
rendered them generally uncomfortable by breaking up the
society they had been accustomed to from the commencement
of the Commission ; and he thereupon submitted the propriety
of summoning the whole of the Jury in future, with an allowance
for expenses to such an expense as the Court should think itself
warranted in granting." The Commissioners acceded to this
request and permitted the whole Jury to be summoned, but
restricted the total allowance to £10 per day. 3 The minor paid
officers — the Sluice-keepers, the Wall-reeve, 4 and the Mole-
catcher (whose salaries remained each at forty shillings a year
throughout the whole century and a half), as well as the gangs
of casual labourers who were from time to time employed —
worked under the joint superintendence of the Foreman of the
Jury and the Expenditor. But it is clear that in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries it was the Foreman of the Jury, without
whose presence the Jury could not proceed to business, who had
the effective responsibility for action in any emergency. What
sort of service it was that he rendered may be seen by the follow-
ing example that we take from the minutes. ' Whereas on
Friday last, 13th November, there happened a very high tide
between 3 and 4 p.m., which, with the extraordinary winds
attending it, occasioned a great slip in the wall against Sir
Edward Betenson's two acres ; which the Wall-reeve, perceiving,
1 MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Greenwich, 30th May 1811 ; see also
13th April 1793.
2 Ibid. 29th May 1824. The Commissioners had apparently attempted to
make a similar reduction in the number of jurymen in 1699, but no notice was
taken of their order (ibid. 1699).
3 Ibid. 14th October 1824. We see similar attempts to limit the cost of
the jurymen's dinner in the Isle of Dogs and Tower Hamlets Courts (ibid.
Poplar, 7th April 1669, 5th May 1702 ; ibid. Tower Hamlets, 7th October 1709).
Latterly, the jurymen for the Isle of Dogs, still governing a thinly inhabited
tract of marsh land, received a pound for each day's attendance and served
about four days a year (Report and Evidence of House of Commons Com-
mittee on the Sewers of the Metropolis, 1834).
4 In the Isle of Dogs, the corresponding officer was called the Marsh Bailiff
(MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Poplar).
64 THE COURT OF SEWERS
immediately repaired to the Foreman of the Jury, and acquainted
him thereof. Whereupon the said Foreman immediately sent
a messenger to the Expenditor to inform him also of the same,
but to prevent any ill consequence that might happen till the
return of that messenger, the said Foreman desired the Wall-
reeve to proceed in what was necessary to be done for securing
any further hurt that might happen by any delay whatever ;
and upon the return of the said messenger, the Foreman received
a letter from the Expenditor that he was ill and not able to come
out, and desired the Foreman would take such care he could of
it, but the Wall-reeve being at work by such directions as the
Foreman had before given him with six men which he had got
together, they worked upon the same all that night and till after
high- water next morning tide." The Wall-reeve and Foreman
imagined that their hasty action would suffice, but three days
later strong winds and a high tide brought the work down again.
The Wall-reeve, who had been keeping watch continuously,
reported at once to the Foreman, who hastily got together what
jurors he could to survey the breach. The jurors viewed the
damaged wall, and ordered repairs to be instantly executed to
the value of £33. 1 It is noteworthy that though the Jury
doubtless consisted, from generation to generation, of nearly
the same persons, we do not find that they excited any jealousy
among their fellow denizens of the Marsh, nor do we discover
that their presentments were ever disputed or hostilely received.
Individual owners, nervous about the stability of the embank-
ment, were willing to pay the expenses of special views by the
Jury ; and as the village of Greenwich increased in population,
we find groups of respectable householders using the Sewers Jury
to get remedied the common urban nuisances for which there
might otherwise have been no redress. 2 The same confidence
was shown by the Commissioners and the inhabitants in the
Foreman of the Jury. It was he who sometimes bought, as
opportunities presented themselves, the loads of earth or chalk
with which the embankments were repaired. It was, as a rule,
upon him that fell the responsibility of devising the works of
repair to be executed. We find in 1827 a special expression of
1 MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Greenwich, 17th November 1741.
a In 17G1, three of the jurymen were carpenters; and the Commissioners
gave them the carpentering work to do, each having six months of it in rotation
(ibid. 18th October 1761).
RENEWAL BY CO-OPTION 65
the thanks of the Court to the then Foreman, for " the ability,
skill and assiduity exercised for a long series of years ... in
superintending the works of the level, and particularly the late
new embankment," as well as for " the constant promptitude
evinced by him as immediate occasions have arisen from high
tides and other emergencies (thereby protecting the property of
the landowners from injury and devastation)." As an excep-
tional mark of esteem and acknowledgment the Commissioners
thereupon voted fifty guineas to this aged and long-serving
officer, which he laid out in a piece of plate. 1
It is, indeed, not easy to discover what function was fulfilled
in the Greenwich marshes by the Commissioners themselves.
Whatever they may have been at the outset, they became, it is
clear, a body renewing itself virtually by co-option. 2 Though
the total number on the Commission was fifty or sixty, including
several peers and ecclesiastical dignitaries, 3 the usual attendance
was confined to fewer than a dozen of the resident gentry ; and
these intimate friends and neighbours used their " wages " to
provide themselves with a dinner on every Court day. 4 The
Court of Sewers — which they solemnly held once, and latterly
1 MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Greenwich, 12th April and 18th
October 1827.
2 As each term of ten years came near its expiration the Clerk was told to
" take care to get a new Commission of Sewers against the sitting of the next
general court, and to insert therein such other gentlemen to be Commissioners
(with them already so nominated and appointed) as shall be directed him by
the present Commissioners or any of them " (ibid. 29th September 1692).
3 See, for instance, the list in ibid. 1712. In 1810 it had grown to 98, but
only 45 had qualified within the first year (ibid. 9th November 1810, 13th April
1811). The Poplar Commissioners were 49 in number in 1689, 114 in 1757, but
only 66 in 1800. Of these between one -third and one -half usually qualified
(ibid. Poplar, 1689, 1757, 1800). Those for the Tower Hamlets in 1714
were 129, of whom 58 qualified ; in 1725, 195, of whom 70 qualified ;
in 1737, 150, of whom 81 qualified; in 1821, 140, of whom 88 qualified;
and in 1831, 173, of whom 107 qualified (ibid. Tower Hamlets, 1714, 1725,
1737, 1821, 1831). The Westminster Commission of 1837 (the last) included
240 persons.
* This dinner was, we believe, taken in lieu of the 4s. a day allowed by
statute which (as in the case of the Justices of the Peace) was, as we have seen (The
Parish and the County, 1907, pp. 305, 409, 413, 423, 428), latterly seldom drawn
in cash. The Tower Hamlets Commissioners, after dining together for many
years, decided in 1779, " that in future the Commissioners attending the whole
business of the Commission do receive 4s. apiece pursuant to Act of Parliament,
and that no dinners in future be provided " (MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners,
Tower Hamlets, 16th December 1779). This evidently did not continue. In
1822 they are again dining together, and direct that " no other wines be ordered
than port, sherry, Lisbon or Bucellas " (ibid. 15th May and 17th July 1822).
F
66 THE COURT OF SEWERS
twice, a year, at which all " owners, tenants and jurats " of the
Marsh were required to " answer to their names " l — seems to
have done little more than receive the presentments made by the
Jury since the last Court, to record them as decrees of the Court,
and formally to levy the sums recommended by the Jury. We
find no trace of any dispute or divergence of interest between
the Commissioners and the Jury. The Court occasionally made
byelaws, doubtless on the recommendation of the Jury, for the
future regulation of the Marsh : as to the date after which reeds
might be cut ; 2 as to the prohibition of particular nuisances, and
as to the use of the river wall and embankment as a wharf or
landing-place, especially for the landing of manure from London. 3
The Commissioners themselves directed some of the more im-
portant contracts to be entered into for chalk and other materials
needed by the Jury ; 4 but they did not mind making use of one
of the jurymen who mentioned that he was going to Maidstone
in the following week, and would be able to arrange for a supply
of stone. 5 In 1826, when they were building a new river wall,
they gladly adopted the suggestion of the Foreman of the Jury
that he should get earth, as opportunity offered, by " merely
giving some beer to the bargemen " bringing down the stuff ex-
cavated from the dock and other works about London. 6 They
permitted the building of a wooden bridge over the Ravensbourne
by a particular landowner, for his private use only. 7 It was the
Court, too, which gave permission for the erection of windmills
or other buildings on the banks ; 8 and it was in its name that
the Clerk made any communications to outside authorities and
dignitaries. The Court appointed its own " Clerk of Sewers," a
local solicitor remunerated by small fees and perquisites, with
whom the Commissioners were perpetually having difficulties ; 9
1 See " methodus tencndi curiam do Sewers," on the last page of vol. ii. of
MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Greenwich. " This being a Court of
Record, three proclamations must be made," is a memorandum in the .MS.
Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Poplar, 1802.
2 Ibid. Greenwich, 10th December 1702, 28th September 1704.
3 Ibid. 10th December 1702, 8th May and 1 St li September L703, 28th
September 1704.
4 Ibid. 1th April 1761, 26th May 1775.
5 Ibid. 21st April and 2nd June 1781. 6 Ibid. 12th October 1826.
Ibid, ."list July 1729. 8 Ibid. 8th January 1698.
" Not til! 17!>."> was the salary made £21 a year (ibid. 10th October 17!!.")).
But the salaries paid to the Clerks, Bailiffs, Wall-reeves and Surveyors of the
Courts of Sewers Mire not the whole of their authorised remuneration. There
THE EXPENDITOR 67
and they filled vacancies in the minor offices of Sluice-keeper,
Wall-reeve and Mole-catcher. But we see no attempt on their
part to develop any executive staff other than that of the Stand-
ing Jury. Down to 1729, indeed, they do not seem even to have
appointed committees, except on rare occasions, and then they
only made use of this administrative device for obtaining further
information and for audit. Their principal pre - occupation
seems, in fact, to have been with the accounts of the money
raised and expended under the direction of the Jury. They had
constant difficulties with the Expenditor for the time being,
who could not be got to render accounts, and who was perpetually
trying to throw on the Commission the payment of his deputy. 1
Once, at least, they had to get the Sheriff to pursue a recalcitrant
Deputy Expenditor, arrest him, and bring him up in custody. 2
Once only in the course of the century and a half do we find the
Commissioners really troubling their heads about the means of
protecting the Marsh from the waters ; 3 and then, in the need
that became manifest about 1825 — whether owing to the long-
continued dredging for ballast near the embankment, 4 or to the
were customary fees payable by individuals for every act performed for their
benefit, including every order, permit, respite, discharge or view. Tables of
these authorised fees were occasionally fixed by the Court {e.g. MS. Minutes,
Sewer Commissioners, Surrey and Kent, 27th March 1700). Fees were abolished
in Holborn and Finsbury by the Act of 1814 ; and in the Tower Hamlets, by
Sir Daniel Williams' reforms of 1821 (Report of House of Commons Com-
mittee on Sewers in the Metropolis, 1823, pp. 5, 25) ; but they survived
elsewhere.
1 In this he was at last successful. The salary of £4 a year was raised in
1809 to £10 (MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Greenwich, 14th October 1809).
2 Ibid. 29th November 1729, 8th February and 28th March 1730. The
women owners were, we grieve to record, particularly troublesome. In 1699
the Court had to meet no fewer than seven times, partly because Dame Margaret
Boreman (whose name is preserved in the parish by her charitable endowments)
would not pay her " marsh tax " (ibid. 6th January 1698, 22nd February 1699) ;
partly because Mrs. Gransdell, the Expenditor for the previous year, would not
render any accounts (ibid. 2nd October, 9th and 28th November and 7th
December 1699), whereupon she was eventually fined £4 (leviable bjr distraint
by the Sheriff), and threatened with a further fine of £40. It is pathetically
noted that " Mr. Day, one of the Commissioners, did concur in the same order,
but desired he might be excused from signing the same, the Expenditrix being
his daughter " (ibid. 7th December 1699).
3 In 1699 it was specially provided that the Commissioners should " have
notice given them by a written ticket when the Jury walk that they may (if
they please) walk with them and inspect the condition of the Level " (ibid.
10th January 1699).
4 Ibid. 16th June 1711, 19th May 1715, 14th August 1716. We see similar
complaints of the ballast lighters " digging ballast near the walls," in the MS.
Minutes of the Sewer Commissioners, Poplar, 7th August 1727, 13th October
68 THE COURT OF SEWERS
wash of the new steamboats x — for a new sea-wall to be " built
further inland," they were wise enough to call in both Rennie and
Telford ; to take the advice of these engineers ; and to arrange
among themselves and their fellow-proprietors for the cession of
the necessary land and the raising of the requisite funds by a
special rate of fifty shillings per acre — all by the unanimous
consent of all concerned — in order to avoid the expensive luxury
of an Act of Parliament. 2 The Commissioners of Sewers for
East Greenwich were, indeed, for all the legal phraseology of their
Royal Commission, not so much a judicial tribunal superseding
the primitive organisation of the denizens of the Marsh, as a
standing committee of the principal among these, tacitly per-
mitting the ancient customs to continue, and exercising as a
Court little more than an occasional friendly superintendence
over the work done by the Jury of their less wealthy tenants and
neighbours, to whose proceedings they lent the requisite legal
authority. 3
Westminster
It is characteristic of the extreme flexibility of English Local
Government between 1689 and 1835, and of the anarchic diversity
resulting from its complete local autonomy, that identical legal
instruments, under the same statute, should have produced two
such utterly different governing bodies as the Courts of Sewers
for Greenwich and Westminster 4 respectively. This diversity
17;5i), 10th December 1737, etc. ; and as early as 1575 the Jury for East Surrey
presents various " ballast men and their servants for that they dig ballast and
gravol within fifty feet of the Thames wall at Rotherhithe . . . which is like to
be a great decay both to the banks and walls " (MS. Minutes, Sewer Com-
missioners, Surrey and Kent, 14th February 1575).
1 " We present that owing to the constant action of the wave caused by
steamboats upon the banks and walls of the river . . . the foreland has been
washed away within a few years to the extent of 47 feet in depth on an average "
{ibid. Greenwich, 11th April 1833).
2 Ibid. 13th and 29th October and 22nd December 1825, 5th, 11th and 23rd
January, 9th February, 12th October 1826, 10th April 1828, 7th May 1829.
3 From 1690, for at least sixty or seventy years, the Commissioners evidently
owned " reed lands," which they let to various tenants who cut the nods. In
1745 these lands were marked on the map then made, and in 175.") the Com-
missioners paid tit lie, Poor Rate and Highway Rate upon them. After 1800
there is no trace of these lands — the reeda had perhaps become valueless — and
when in 1834 a committee attempted to trace them it came to the conclusion
that the Commissioners had never any legal ownership in them, and that lapse
of time had made it hopeless to discover them {ibid.),
4 For this body, see its MS. Minutes, 1659-1847, and voluminous printed
papers (now with the London County Council) ; Statutes relating to the Sewers
WESTMINSTER 69
was, of course, partly due to the difference between both the
work and the environment of the two bodies. Instead of a
uniform stretch of marsh-land, sparsely inhabited by man or
beast, the Commissioners who were, just before the Restoration,
appointed to govern the drainage of Westminster and its western
environs, found themselves in charge of a district extraordinarily
heterogeneous in its character — on one side, houses densely packed
in narrow streets and alleys, crowding up against the Royal
palaces and parks, Parliament and the Courts of Justice, the
Abbey and its foul " sanctuary " precincts, hemmed in by the
wharves and landing-places of the Strand and the morass of Mill-
bank ; on the other side, low-lying fields extending indefinitely
to the westward, submerged at every high tide, where the little
towns of Chelsea and Kensington stretched out their scattered
houses towards the rural villages of Fulham and Hammersmith.
The whole territory was, in fact, either already built on or in
process of becoming so. We may well believe that, by the time
that the King and his Court had returned to Whitehall, the need
had become patent and urgent for instant action, both to remove
the accumulated nuisances of the older parts of the City and
Liberties and to prevent the growth of even worse conditions in
the streets of mean houses that were arising all around.
We note at once that the Commission for Westminster was
issued, not to the principal owners of the land, but to a group
of official dignitaries — great officers of the King's household,
within Westminster and part of Middlesex, editions of 1796 and 1813 ; An
Historical Account of the Subways in the British Metropolis, by J. Williams, 1828 ;
Home Office Domestic State Papers in Public Record Office,Misc. 1831, pp. 20-24 ;
The Vestryman, 26th July 1834 ; Substance of an Opinion delivered at a Court
of Sewers for the City and Liberty of Westminster, by T. L. Donaldson, Chairman,
1835 ; House of Commons Committee Reports and Evidence on Metropolitan
Sewers, 1823 and 1834 ; An Historical and Topographical Description of Chelsea,
by Thomas Faulkner, 1829 ; The Local Government of the Metropolis (Anon.),
1835 ; " The Sewage of the City of Westminster," by John E. Jones, a brief
abstract only, in Proceedings of Institute of Civil Engineers, vol. i. 1839, pp. OS-
es ; A Charge delivered to a Jury summoned to make a Presentment on the District
of the Western Division of the Westminster Sewers, by the Chairman, T. L.
Donaldson, 1841 ; A Short Address to the Representative Vestries under Sir John
Hobhouse's Vestry Act, by John Leslie, 1845 ; House of Commons Return,
No. 686 of 1847 ; First Report and Evidence of Metropolitan Sanitary Com-
mission, 1847 ; Selections from the General, Local and Personal Statutes relative
to Sewers within the Jurisdiction of the Commissions for the City and Liberty of
Westminster, etc., 1847. For the general local government of Westminster,
and the works relating to it, see The Manor and the Borough, 1908, chap. iv.
pp. 212-241.
70 THE COURT OF SEWERS
trusted courtiers of experience alike in war and in council, and
judges of the Courts at Westminster, together with, some useful
underlings of the Ministry, of whom the most active was the
contemporary " Court Justice," charged with the local adminis-
tration of the police. 1 This group of officials established, from
the first, a form of government the exact opposite of that of the
rural Courts of Sewers that we have been describing. In the
detailed minutes of their proceedings, we see them meeting from
the outset every week, themselves doing all the business, and
getting through it with the high-handed despatch characteristic
of men versed in great affairs, if not also with that disregard of
legal technicalities which seems to mark in administration the
lawyer outside his own domain. At these Saturday or Thursday
afternoon meetings — sometimes held actually in the Courts of
Chancery or King's Bench 2 — the Westminster Court of Sewers
appointed salaried executive officers ; received their reports ;
called for special surveys by outside experts ; ordered sewers
to be new-bottomed, drains to be enlarged, ditches to be scoured,
and sluices to be repaired ; commanded owners and occupiers
to be assessed, rates to be levied and goods to be distrained ; all,
apparently, without troubling itself much with the paraphernalia
1 Among the principal landowners of Westminster, in the seventeenth as in
the nineteenth century, were — not to mention the Grosvenors, whose Belgravian
fields were not yet generally of building value, — the great families of the Russt -lis,
Cecils, Howards and Percies, together with the ecclesiastical dignitaries. None
of these seem to have been represented among the active Commissioners of
Sewers, though the Dean and Chapter, at any rate, were presumably formally
named in the Commission. The members most frequent in attendance in-
cluded the veteran Earl of Craven, the Earl of Newport, Sir Charles Berkeley,
Treasurer of the King's Household, Sir William Playter, Bart., Sir John
Denham, Knight of the Bath, "Surveyor of His Majesty's Works," General
Sir William Pulteney, Sir Charles Harbord, Sir Hugh Cartwright, Sir George
Barker, Sir Richard Everard, Sir John Baker and Sir Edmondbury Godfrey,
whose contemporary work as Court Justice we have already described [The
Parish and the County, 1907, pp. 236, 338). He acted as Treasurer, and was
apparently the most active Commissioner. In the Minutes for 12th October
1(>78. it is noted in the margin, " Sir Edmondbury Godfrey missing to-day " —
an entry reminding us of the Bensation caused by bis unexplained murder [Who
Kitted Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey ?, by Alfred Marks. 1905).
2 It used to be an " oflice tradition that formerly the business of the Com-
mission was transacted in the Court of Queen's Bench, that the Chief Justice
occupied the chair, a few Commissioners only surrounding him " (Minutes of
Evidence to Kirst Report of Metropolitan Sanitary Commission, 184(>. p. 38).
The MS. Minutes show the Commissioners to have sat " in the Court of King's
Bench, Westminster Hall " Oil 20th June 1662, and many oilier days at this
period. On 1st August 1662, they met " in the Chancery Court in Westminster
Hall." No chairman is named.
SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN 7 i
of a Court of Justice or necessarily waiting for the dilatory ex-
pedient of a presenting Jury. 1 Nor do the Commissioners content
themselves with issuing orders to their little staff of executive
officers. Between the weekly meetings, one or two of the
members undertake themselves to view a broken drain or noisome
ditch, or to survey, as a whole, the drainage of a particular street.
Another of them, the ever - busy Sir Edmondbury Godfrey,
himself acts as Treasurer and Accountant, receiving the monev
from all the parochial rate collectors, and paying the numerous
small bills. 2 Presently, Sir Christopher Wren, appointed a
Commissioner but too busy rebuilding churches after the Great
Fire to attend every week, is specially summoned to be present,
and is set to solve a particular problem. 3 In 1667, the whole
administration is reorganised by a committee of nine Com-
missioners, under Sir John Denham, " His Majesty's Surveyor,"
with the result that the Court becomes even more of an executive
and less of a judicial authority than before. 4 A permanent chair-
man is appointed with a Standing Committee of accounts. Both
the revenue and the expenditure of the Commission, heretofore
professedly divided among the innumerable separate works done,
are apparently to a great extent consolidated, and a regular ex-
penditure is budgeted for, including a large item for " emer-
gencies." It is, in fact, impossible not to see, in the archives of
this Commission during its opening years, the records, not of a
judicial Court, but of an active executive authority, impelled —
probably under Royal mandate — by a determination to get the
Westminster land drainage into something like order. Nor were
the Commissioners forgetful, in their zeal for efficiency, of the need
of securing the co-operation and consent of the inhabitants at
1 The officers appear to have included a Clerk, a Cryer, a " Bailiff of the
Sewers," and several " sworn surveyors " (MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners,
Westminster, 15th August 1662). But others are gradually added. It is for
instance " ordered that Mr. A. P. be appointed to look after the cleansing
of the new Sewers and to have £20 yearly for his salary " {ibid. 22nd August
1662).
2 It is ordered that a fine of 10s. be imposed on the nine collectors appointed
for the new sewer at Charing Cross, " who were legally summoned to attend
Mr. Godfrey, Treasurer, for the perfecting of their accounts, and failed " {ibid.
29th August 1662).
3 Ibid. 13th April and 16th November 1678, 29th January and 17th June
1680. Wren's proposal for a new sewer in Westminster is referred to in the
paper by (Sir) J. W. Bazalgette, " On the Main Drainage of London," in
Proceedings of the Institute of Civil Engineers, vol. xxiv., 1865, p. 281.
4 MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Westminster, 17th August 1667.
72 THE COURT OF SEWERS
large. They leave eacli parish to assess and collect all the sums
that they levy upon its inhabitants ; though they peremptorily
require this service to be regularly performed, by Assessors and
Collectors whom the parish officers — sometimes the Surveyors
of Highways, sometimes the Constable and Churchwardens — have
to present for their approval. 1 These Assessors and Collectors,
who received apparently no remuneration, had to account to the
Treasurer of the Court, and were liable to be fined for any neglect
of their duty. At every weekly meeting the Commissioners were
open to receive any complaints from individuals or groups of
individuals, 2 and they even ordered that, whenever any work
was done in any parish, a committee of the inhabitants was
to join with the Commissioners in signing the orders for the
expenditure of the rate.
What is remarkable is the small part that the Jury plays in
this " Court " of Sewers. The entries in the minutes relating to
Juries are few and far between. Every two years the Sheriff
is called upon to empanel two new Juries, one for the City of
Westminster and the other for the remaining part of Middlesex
1 MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Westminster, 20th and 27th April,
4th and 18th May 16G7. A nearly contemporary record in a neighbouring
Court of Sewers gives us the whole procedure. On receipt of a complaint
or a petition for a work of repair, the Commissioners ordered the Jury
to view and had an estimate of the probable expense of the work prepared
by the Surveyor. A notice was then sent to the Churchwardens and
Constable of the parish to return the names of fit persons to assess the
necessary sum. When the names were furnished the Commissioners signed a
warrant authorising these persons, eight in number, to assess the amount.
When they returned the " book of rates " so made, they gave in the names of
two persons fit and able to serve as Collectors. These persons were thereupon
empowered by the Commissioners to collect the rates {ibid. Tower Hamlets,
12th October and 2nd November 1703).
2 " Upon a petition exhibited to this Court by several inhabitants of the
Great Ambrey, complaining of the great nuisance and anno} r ance they suffer
by means of a branch of the sewer issuing and running into the Thames sluice
sower ; ordered that a view thereof be taken by any three of the Commissioners,
who are to meet on Saturday, 21st June, to fake (lie view and to report their
opinion on the next Court day" (ibid. Westminster, Kith June 1(>G2). They
report that it is a serious nuisance and recommend, as " the only way to
remove the annoyance," that steps be taken " to stop up the said ditch,
the street to be Levelled and paved . . . with a channel to run in the
middle thereof" (ibid. 20th June 1GG2). This is decided on, and the Court
orders " that an assessment be brought into this Court equally laid and
imposed upon the several . . . inhabitants concerned, that is to say, upon all
such who have any gutter, drain, sink or spout running into the same, . . .
and that Sir Hugh Cartwright, one of the Commissioners of this Court, be
waited on by the inhabitants and desired to see the said work done accord-
ingly " (ibid. 11th July 1662).
THE PRESENTING JURY 73
that lay within the jurisdiction of the Commissioners. 1 These
Juries are now and again directed to view particular sewers and
drains which had been complained of as offensive, and to report
who was in default. 2 Occasionally an inhabitant is fined for
non-attendance or discharged for some good reason. It is
apparently their business spontaneously to present anything
that is wrong with the sewers. We have even cases in which
the Jury is reproached for not making presentments, and given
a month's grace to discover some nuisances. 3 In one case, on
the other hand, the Jury is ordered not to present any nuisances
in a certain place, as the Commissioners have it in mind to deal
otherwise with the district. Only very occasionally do we find
any one being " amerced " by the Jury, and the fine estreated
into the Court of Exchequer. 4 For the first ten years of the Com-
mission, we see the Jury ousted from its task of assessing the
persons who are liable to pay the cost of the several works, this
work being done by the Parish Assessors. In no case has the
Jury anything to do with the execution of any work, and it is
not even called upon to certify that it has been completed. In
short, the Jury of Sewers of the Westminster Court was, from the
beginning, utterly unlike the Standing Juries of Sewers of the
Court Leet type, which governed the marshes of Greenwich and
Somersetshire and may be traced in East Kent and Lincolnshire.
It resembled rather the Hundred Jury which during these very
years was presenting nuisances to the Courts of Quarter Sessions
of Essex, Dorset and Devon. 5 This resemblance is strengthened
by the fact that, from the outset, the Westminster Commissioners
permitted the presentments of their Jury of Sewers to be traversed
by defendants as a matter of course, on a recognisance in the sum
1 MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Westminster, 6th Jury 1667. Neither
Westminster nor the Tower Hamlets, though otherwise important " Liberties,"
were out of the jurisdiction of the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex (as to
whom see The Parish and the County, 1907, pp. 288, 312; and The Manor and the
Borough, 1908, pp. 670-673). On the other hand, for the Court of Sewers of St.
Katharine, near the Tower of London, the persons to serve on the Juries
were returned by the High Bailiff of the Liberty of the Hospital and Precinct
of St. Katharine (MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, St. Katharine). For
the Tower Hamlets Court, however, the duty was performed by the Sheriffs
of London and Middlesex.
2 Ibid. Westminster, 18th May and 27th July 1667.
3 Ibid. 11th October 1662.
4 See a case, ibid. 11th October 1662.
5 The Parish and the County, 1907, pp. 456-480.
74 THE COURT OF SEWERS
of 40s. being entered into ; and they arranged for a trial of these
traverses at a subsequent sessions of the court, we presume by a
separate " Traverse Jury." x Like the Hundred Jury itself, the
Jury of Sewers was, in Westminster, an insignificant part of the
judicial machinery ; — in short, a mere " Annoyance Jury " only
spasmodically made use of and persisting only as an atrophied
traditional remnant.
The high-handed efficiency and extra-legal methods of the
Commissioners whom Charles the Second had appointed did not
go wholly undisputed. The Statute of Sewers enabled the Court
to charge the cost of particular works on the owners of lands
benefited, but it gave no authority to tax the community at large
for such general expenses of a permanent establishment as were
not met by the usual fees of office. Hence we see the West-
minster Commissioners casting about for some source of general
revenue. In 1667 they applied for a " privy seal " which should
authorise them to retain for the purposes of the Commission
the fines and forfeitures which they were required to estreat unto
the Court of Exchequer, 2 a request to which the Court of
Exchequer (or the contemporary Treasury officials) seem to have
demurred. The Commissioners take upon themselves, on their
own authority, to make a general sewers rate of a penny in the
pound " upon all houses, lands, tenements and hereditaments ' :
throughout the whole jurisdiction, on an assessment of not less
than one half the rack rent, leaseholders being authorised to
deduct the amount from their rents. 3 The general penny rate
was, from the outset, intended as an annual impost to meet the
cost of the general works and standing charges, and it was re-
peated in the same form in the following year. 4 But this led to
revolt. The Parishes more than two miles distant from the City
of London denied the Commissioners' jurisdiction ; 5 whilst these
and others also raised the question whether the Commissioners
could lawfully levy any money except for particular purposes,
from the particular persons declared liable, by formal present-
ment of a Jury of Sewers. The Assessors appointed for the
1 MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Westminster, 10th January 1067.
2 Ibid. 1 7th August L667.
3 Ibid. 17th August L667. * Ibid. 22nd August 1668.
5 The Statute of Sewers, I! James I. o. It (1605), had expressly given juris-
diction over streams, whether tidal or not, within two miles of the City of
London.
A GENERAL RATE 75
Parish of Kensington refused to collect the general Sewers Rate,
and were eventually upheld in their refusal by the King's Judges. 1
It is probably owing to this legal decision that we find the Com-
missioners now nominally calling in for rating purposes, instead
of the Parish Assessors, its own Jury of Sewers, and levying its
rates on long lists of persons — including, we believe, the owners
of all the lands and houses within the district — in the form of
presentments by that Jury. The use of this judicial form did
not, in fact, prevent the continued levy of a general rate " for
emergencies," at least on all the Parishes within the ancient City
of Westminster, and in 1690 the Commissioners got a clause in-
serted in the London and Westminster Paving Act of that year, 2
definitely extending the authority of the various Metropolitan
Commissions of Sewers to all the Parishes within the Bills of
Mortality, together with the " town of Kensington."
After the Revolution we note a rapid deterioration both in
the social status and in the initiative and efficiency of the Court.
The great personages gradually withdraw themselves from
regular attendance. The names of noblemen and civil and
ecclesiastical dignitaries are duly enrolled in every new Com-
mission issued, decade after decade, by the successive Lord
Chancellors right down to 1837, but from the latter part of the
seventeenth century it seems to have been the custom for these
to have been supplemented by batches of new names of humbler
folk, which were, in fact, suggested on the occasion of each new
Commission, by the more active members of the expiring body. 3
Thus, whilst the total number of Commissioners increased, the
actual attendance became restricted to a score or so of the
smaller folk, who thus came, in effect, to recruit themselves by
1 MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Westminster, 26th September, 31st
October 1668, 27th November, 11th and 18th December 1669, 22nd January,
19th February, 5th and 12th March, 18th June 1670.
2 2 William and Mary, session 2, cap. 8, sec. 14 ; see post, pp. 239-240.
3 This is described in detail in the " Statement of Proceedings usually
adopted upon Applications for the Renewal of Commissions," printed for
the Westminster Sewer Commissioners in 1837, and included in House of
Commons Return, No. 686, of 1847. In 1837, when the Commissioners applied as
usual for a new Commission, submitting the names of all the surviving existing
Commissioners, Lord Cottenham, then Lord Chancellor, took the unprecedented
course of asking which of the Commissioners had ever attended ; struck off
most of those who had not even qualified, and added some reformers, notably
John Leslie, a local master tailor, through whose pertinacity the maladminis-
tration was eventually exposed (ibid.).
76 THE COURT OF SEWERS
co-option. The formal organisation of the Court remained
unaltered, but we see certain significant changes occur in pro-
cedure, in the character of the work done, and in the methods
of administration. Whether or not by reason of some legal
decision, for three-quarters of a century no extended or expensive
new sewers are undertaken. The Commissioners confine them-
selves to clearing the existing sewers, repairing the iron gates
by which their orifices were protected, and peremptorily ordering
the removal of the " houses of office " which were everywhere
being stealthily connected with the underground channels. The
employment of outside experts to survey the drainage of a
particular district as a whole is silently abandoned. Committees
of inhabitants to help the Court with their local supervision are
no longer summoned. Parish Assessors and Collectors are
dispensed with. The Jury retires into the background, almost
ceasing even to present nuisances, and finds its function limited
to a formal adoption of presentments as to the owners, occupiers
and rental value of lists of tenements drawn up by the Clerk.
There are no Standing Committees. The Court itself, except
for a somewhat fuller attendance at the formal opening of each
new Commission, becomes a shifting dozen or so of unknown
persons, varying from meeting to meeting according to chance
or to the " interest " which this or that member has in particular
properties. For the most part the actual administration devolves
upon little committees of the Commissioners, the members
resident in each locality being supposed themselves to view and
report nuisances, and to supervise any works undertaken. The
one or two ill-paid " sworn surveyors " are reinforced, and partly
superseded, by a set of master workmen, or incipient contractors
— a bricklayer, a digger, a pavior — who are formally appointed
to undertake all the work of the Commission, supplying the
labour at standing prices. We see signs of repeated petty
jobbery, against which the superior folk who attend the opening
meetings of each new Commission spasmodically struggle. Now
and again a special committee of investigation discovers continued
frauds in the use of the Commissioners' material by the " work-
man in trust." It becomes necessary to pass resolutions pro-
hibiting Commissioners from acting as such " workmen " under
the Court : resolutions which are apparently soon forgotten.
Yet with all this, down to about 1760 our vision of the Court,
CORRUPTION 77
taken as a whole, is that of a naive and candid Authority ;
muddling through its internal and external difficulties in fairly
straightforward fashion ; accurately recording its doings in
its records, including its own delinquencies ; and maintaining
the extremely low level of efficiency at which alone it aimed,
without malversations more serious than a constant mean
jobbery. Presently a new development becomes apparent. In
the last quarter of the eighteenth century we are conscious of the
same sort of change in the Westminster Commission of Sewers
as we have described in the Middlesex Quarter Sessions. 1 In
both cases there is on the surface a new kind of efficiency and
an increased breadth of view. The Court of Sewers now meets
regularly every month or six weeks by public notice. It is
presided over by a standing chairman, elected for a year. It is,
from 1776 onwards, served by standing Committees on Accounts,
Works and Rates respectively, which are annually appointed. 2
The staff of permanent officials is increased, and the scale of
salaries is raised. The demand for an improvement in the
amenity of the streets, which led, in 1760-1780, to the establish-
ment of Paving Commissioners, and the repaving of the whole
of the West End of London with flat stones for the side-walks
and squared granite blocks for the roadways, was, we may
believe, not without its effect on the Westminster Commissioners
of Sewers. The Paving Acts required them to make good their
iron grates in each street as it was repaved, and a special officer
was appointed to attend to this work. 3 New sewers were under-
taken for the benefit of the new houses about Park Lane, and
on the Western side of the Green Park. 4 On the issue of a new
Commission in 1769 the Court attempted to take the Western
parts of its district 5 seriously in hand, and appointed a separate
set of officers to cope with the work. But it was baffled in this
ambition by renewed resistance on the part of the outlying
Parishes, a recalcitrant owner at Hammersmith successfully
repelling, in the Court of King's Bench, its claim to exercise any
1 The Parish and the County, 1907.
2 MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Westminster, 14th June 1776.
3 Ibid. 5th July 1765.
4 Ibid. 13th October 1769.
3 Defined as Chelsea, Kensington, Hammersmith, Chiswick, Ealing, Acton,
Brentford, Hanwell, Isleworth, Twickenham, Teddington and Hampton (ibid.
25th February 1769).
78 THE COURT OF SEWERS
jurisdiction beyond Chelsea and Kensington. 1 Even in the
densely peopled part of its district the Court of Sewers evidently
lagged behind the energetic Paving Commissioners — not even
troubling to communicate with them as to their intention to
tear up the pavement for sewer repairs 2 — and in 1773 a proposal
was made by the latter that, for greater convenience of street
administration, the two bodies should, by a new Paving Act,
be completely amalgamated. 3 This proposal was indignantly
rejected by the little knot of active Commissioners running the
Court of Sewers, whom we see jealously guarding their own
powers against encroachment. 4 Meanwhile the volume of
business was steadily increasing, and the financial transactions,
which were always met out of the current rates, amounted, in
the aggregate, to large sums. The collection of the general
Sewers Rate, and of the special rates levied for particular
benefits, 5 is now in the hands of permanent collectors appointed
by the Court. The Jury practically disappears, except as a mere
formality. The little master- workmen at " standing prices ' :
are replaced by capitalist contractors, who are assumed to tender
for the whole work of each year at competitive rates. The
administration is now done behind the closed doors of the stand-
ing committees, whose reports (which were, of course, not
printed), are always adopted by the Court, the so-called open
sessions of which are merely formal. . Unfortunately neither
these reports nor the decisions of the Court upon them are
reproduced in the minutes, which become decorous, and even
elaborate in their formality, but at the same time unenlightening.
Judging not only from these formal minutes, but also from what
is revealed in the course of Parliamentary enquiries in 1823 and
1 MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Westminster, 2nd February, 20th
July, 26th November 1770. An attempt to remedy this lack of jurisdiction
by a Local Act failed (see House of Commons Journals, L'lst December 177o,
22nd January 1771).
2 Ibid. 30th August 1776. 3 Ibid. 3rd and 17th December 1773.
* Ibid. 7th February 1783, loth May 1789.
5 In 1776 we sec the tendency to defray everything from a uniform
general Sewers Rate in the order " that all persons who receive benefit from
the sewers by means of a communication either above or under ground arc to
pay the whole of the rate assessed aa being equally benefited" (ibid. 29th
November 1776). It is of some interest to find the surveyor reporting in 17!)o,
" that be examined the premises of Jeremiah Bentham, Esq., who appealed
by letter . . . and that they <1" not receive any benefit from the sewer.
Ordered that be be excused paying the rate assessed <m him" (ibid. 26th
November 1790).
JOBBERY 79
1834 respectively, and in the hostile criticism that gradually
made itself heard, it seems to us that the outward show of vigour
and efficiency which marks the Westminster Commission from
1760 onward, was not accompanied by any improvement in
administrative purity. What happened was that the character
of the corruption changed. The naive and petty jobbery of the
earlier years of the eighteenth century was replaced by collusion
between some of the Commissioners and the contractors, who
were allowed to go on charging the same prices year after year,
without competitive tendering. 1 The organisation of the Court,
even after a century of development, was, in fact, not strong
enough to stand the strain of the enormous increase of business
that poured in upon it towards the end of the century, when the
fields of Pimlico and Paddington, Marylebone and St. Pancras
were being rapidly covered with houses, and when every specula-
tive builder was seeking to connect his new erections with the
public sewers.
If we attempt to visualise the Westminster Commission of
Sewers as it was in the nineteenth century, we shall realise how
far it had departed both from the legal framework of a Court of
Sewers, as set forth in the statute of 1532 and in its own Com-
mission, and from the practical administration of the little group
of courtiers and officials whom we saw, in the early days of the
Restoration, despatching business in the Court of King's Bench.
By 1800 the Westminster Commission seems to have included
nominally about two hundred members, among them being some
1 We see one of the Commissioners named Holland bringing in his son as
a contractor for making the new sewers, at first as the lowest of five tenderers
for brickwork and digging (MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Westminster,
13th October 1769) ; then, when a carpentering job has been tendered for, the
father, as a Commissioner, suggests that his son would do it for less (ibid.
24th November 1769) ; presently, when the father is again present, the general
digging work is given to the son, in spite of the protest of the person already
appointed (ibid. 2nd November 1770) ; the same thing happens with the general
bricklaying work (ibid. 30th October and 11th December 1772), by which time
it appears that all sorts of extra allowances and privileges are accorded to him
over other contractors ; seven years later we find him regularl}* installed as
the general contractor for digging, bricklaying, carpenters' and smiths' work
for a term of years (ibid. 14th January 1780) ; and this contract is periodically
renewed at the same prices without other tenders being invited (ibid. 4th
October 1782). Twenty years later he and another man have the whole of
the work between them, and their prices are repeatedly increased at their
request, without any tendering (ibid. 26th August 1803, 31st May 1805, 15th
December 1809). At last they relinquish the business, which a new pair of
contractors monopolise for another generation (ibid. 2nd March 1810).
80 THE COURT OF SEWERS
fifty peers and privy councillors, many of the landowners of the
district, great and small, and a miscellaneous collection of
ecclesiastical dignitaries, members of Parliament, private gentle-
men, architects, surveyors and builders, all purporting to be
qualified by the ownership of freehold property. Meetings were
held at the Westminster Guildhall about eight times a year —
presently at the Sewers Office nearly every week — nominally
" in Open Court," but no provision was made for admitting the
public, and no spectator seems ever to have attended. Every
ten years, at the first meeting of a new Commission, there would
be a gathering of some size, when two or three of the dignitaries
might be present. But half the persons included in the Com-
mission never took the trouble to qualify for the office by attend-
ing even once to take the oath, and not more than thirty or forty
attended more than a few times throughout the whole decade.
Six Commissioners formed a quorum, and the usual attendance
seems to have varied from that number up to a score. A Jury
was still empanelled by the Sheriff from time to time, but its
presentments had become mere formalities, and the jurymen
were such as attended only to oblige the Commissioners or for
the sake of the fees. 1 From the very beginning of the century, 2
we see the Commission falling more and more into the hands of
1 When they wanted a Jury, the Commissioners themselves suggested to
the Sheriff which jurymen to summon, and they took care to include tradesmen
supplying the Commission and other subservient persons (Evidence to First
Report of Metropolitan Sanitary Commission, 1847, p. 39). But the Jury had,
even in 1823, long since ceased to " view," and did nothing but formally make
the assessments in the office (Report of House of Commons Committee on
Sewers in the Metropolis, 1823, p. 35).
2 In 1807 the Commission for the first time succeeded in getting an Act of
Parliament of its own, definitely declaring the district subject to its rule
(47 George III. sess. 1, c. 7). This was to include Westminster, St. Giles-in-
the-Fields, St. George's, Bloomsbury, St. Pancras, Marylebone, Hampstead,
Paddington, Kensington, Chelsea, and even part of Willesden, but nothing
beyond the brook which bounded Chelsea on the west. It was, however,
claimed that the Act left untouched the jurisdiction over the tidal or navigable
waters of Middlesex west of that brook (Report of House of Commons Com-
mittee on Sewers, 1834, p. 1). The Act also authorised the Commissioners to
require notice of tho making of any new sewer by a private person, and even
gave them express power " to order and direct tho making of any new vaults,
sewers, drains and water-courses," though (as was afterwards contended) not
to pay for them at the expense of the general rate. Another Act in 1812
enabled them to buy a house for a public Sewers Oltice, at whioh their meetings
wore subsequently held; and gave them power to take copies <>f the Poor
Rate assessment for use as tho basis <>f their own rate (52 George III. c. 4
House of Commons Journals, 20th January and 20th April is! 2).
THE BOSS 8 1
one George Saunders, an architect and surveyor in active local
practice, who was chairman continuously from 1808 to 1835.
Under his rule every kind of regularity and order seems to have
disappeared. From the Court itself, which now met nearly
every week, every trace of judicial procedure had vanished. 1
Any person desiring to connect his drain with the sewer, or
attending to make any complaint, found himself before an
arbitrary gentleman seated at the head of a long table, assiduously
waited on by the clerk and the surveyor, with half a dozen other
Commissioners coming and going, or sitting at the table engaged
in desultory conversation. This was the Authority which was
supposed to manage the drainage of nearly the whole of West
London, and which contrived to spend on an average thirty
thousand pounds a year on its work. There was no systematic
survey, no use of the printing press, no careful consideration or
examination of the reports of professional officers, not even any
fixed agenda, the chairman being left to bring on any item when
and where he thought fit. 2 The whole of the work was, in fact,
done by the chairman and three or four other Commissioners of
the humbler sort who chose to attend with some regularity. 3
1 Reports of House of Commons Committees on the Sewers of the Metropolis,
1823 and 1834 ; the numerous MS. and printed papers now in possession of
the London County Council ; The Local Government of the Metropolis, Anon.,
1835 ; The Vestryman for 26th July 1834 ; and A Short Address to the Repre-
sentative Vestries under Sir John Hothouse' s Vestry Act, by John Leslie, 1845.
Leslie was himself a Commissioner, and gives us vivid pictures, both of the
procedure of the Court and of its negligence.
2 Report of the House of Commons Committee on the Sewers of the Metro-
polis, 1834, pp. 130, 134.
3 How shifting was the composition of successive Courts may be shown by
one example. The House of Commons Return, No. 686 of 1847, gives the
attendances at three successive meetings in May and June 1822, when (as was
alleged) a gross job was perpetrated. The attendances at these meetings,
besides the chairman, was 17, 13, 13. But only four Commissioners attended
all three meetings (pp. 14-15). At three other meetings in 1826, when gross
partiality to a particular contractor was shown, the attendances were 19, 15,
11. But only two Commissioners were present at all three meetings (pp. 16-17).
Commissioners, in fact, attended only when they were interested in a particular
case. It was significantly computed a few years later that the attendances of
the Commissioners who were architects or agents for estates, or past or present
building speculators, amounted to 47 per cent of the total attendances. The
Commissioners were not paid, the allowance of four shillings a day made by
23 Henry VIII. having long before ceased to be drawn in cash. But at West-
minster as elsewhere it was customary for the active Commissioners to dine at
the expense of the rates, " and on dinner days," we are told in 1847, " the
attendances are more numerous," and mainly of the professional men and
builders (Evidence to First Report of Metropolitan Sanitary Commission, 1847,
p. 36).
G
82 THE COURT OF SEWERS
When we add that most of the property owners had their estate
agents on the Commission to look after their interests ; that
the chairman himself was one of these, and was, moreover, pro-
fessionally interested in many of the houses affected ; that some,
if not all the other members, of the little group were directly inter-
ested in local building speculations; that there was absolutely
no publicity ; that costly works were sometimes decided on
without notice, on mere oral statements by the chairman and
officers ; that there was no public advertisement for tenders, and
no professional or independent or even public audit of the accounts
— it will readily be understood how easily jobs were perpetrated
and how extravagantly the ratepayers' money was spent. Apart
from the favouritism shown to particular landowners and par-
ticular builders, in providing their estates with access to the public
sewers on easy terms, there was, it need hardly be said, corruption
in the execution of the work. For the first forty years of the
nineteenth century the Westminster Commission, as can now
plainly be seen, was in the hands of a couple of families of con-
tractors to whom — just as to their fortimate predecessors during
the previous thirty years — practically all the contracts for sewer
work were given, without publicity, without competitive tender-
ing, and without any sort of check upon the prices charged. The
salaried surveyor to the Commission was himself secretly engaged
as a builder within the area which he had to supervise ; and when
this fact became known to the Commissioners by his becoming
a bankrupt, it did not prevent their reappointing him, after a
brief interval, to his responsible office. 1 Under these circum-
stances it need hardly be said that the quality of the sewer work
executed was as unsatisfactory as the price charged for it. Many
years afterwards heavy damages were recovered from one of
these contractors on its being discovered that he had, during
these years, deliberately omitted rings of brickwork from the
sewer arches. 2 There is, indeed, reason to think that the West-
minster Commission was run by the same corrupt clique of
Justices of the Peace as we have described contemporaneously
dominating the Middlesex Quarter Sessions. The Mainwarings
and the Merc-emus were prominent members. The profitable
1 MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Westminster, 7th .Inly 1820 ami
30th September 1830.
2 The case occurred in 1S4<> (Westminster Commissioners of Sewers v. George
.Bird) ; .if London County Council.
NEGLECT 83
current account of the Commission was, in 1806, suddenly trans-
ferred to the bank of William Mainwaring, then Chairman of
Quarter Sessions, though no reason is given for taking it away
from Drummond's bank, where it had been for nearly a century. 1
But though we do not know how to apportion among particular
persons the disgrace of the corrupt inefficiency of the Commission
in these years, their record is, indeed, a bad one. It was, perhaps,
not altogether their fault, seeing that the Statute of Sewers had
not contemplated the construction of new works, that, at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, many of the streets in West-
minster had absolutely no sewers of any kind, or that thousands of
houses were still imconnected with such sewers as existed. But
what is inexcusable is that the Commissioners should have gone
on for generations without any accurate plan of their sewers,
or any systematic scheme for dealing with their district ; that
they should have suffered such sewers as existed to get into a
terrible state of disrepair ; 2 that, even after their Act of 1807
had given them power to compel new sewers to be made by the
landowners at their unfettered discretion, they should have
neglected to use this power to any but the smallest extent ; 3
that, in spite of the professional knowledge at their command,
they should have clung desperately to the oldest and worst shapes
and sizes of sewers, and should have allowed their contractors to
construct them of faulty material in the cheapest and worst
possible way ; that they should have been grossly partial in their
1 MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Westminster, 16th May 1806. After
the failure of Mainwaring's Bank in 1814, when the Westminster Court of
Sewers, with others, lost heavily, the account was restored to Drummond's
(Report of House of Commons Committee on the Sewers of the Metropolis,
1823, pp. 8, 36 ; ibid. 1834, p. 5).
2 In 1791 a "lottery inspector" writes to the surveyor that "yesterday
while I was searching a house in Orange Court . . . where I was informed a
private lottery was carrying on, I discovered a large hole cut through the
brickwork in the cellar into the sewer, seemingly for the purpose of escape
. . . enabling the offenders to avoid my pursuing them " (MS. Minutes, Sewer
Commissioners, Westminster, 20th September 1791).
3 We never find them compelling owners or builders to make sewers ;
though they issue notices insisting on being informed whenever a sewer is
about to be made, and they demur to its being made at too great a depth for their
convenience. Their only remedy for the building on low-lying land — destined
hereafter to be a cause of great public expense and private inconvenience —
was to " give notice that whenever the lower floors or pavements of buildings
shall have been laid so low as not to admit of their being drained with a proper
current, they will not allow any sewers, or drains into sewers, to be made for
the service of such buildings " {Morning Advertiser, 3rd March 1818).
84 THE COURT OF SEWERS
benefits to the lands of particular owners and in their dealings
with particular builders ; * and, finally, that they should have
made no effort to prevent the poorer streets and alleys of their
district getting into the awful sanitary state to which attention
was called by the ravages of cholera in 1832 and 1848. 2
Other Metropolitan Courts of Sewers
The two Courts of Sewers of Greenwich and Westminster,
remaining in their different ways essentially unchanged in con-
stitution for the whole century and a half, may be taken as the
two leading types from which the half a dozen other Courts of
Sewers of the Metropolitan area more or less diverge in one
direction or another. So long as a district remained essentially
rural, its Court of Sewers approximated to the Greenwich type.
Wherever it becomes urban in character, its Court of Sewers
developed the constitutional features of that of Westminster.
The dykes and sluices of the great stretch of Surrey Marshes
1 As examples of the constant complaints about the inequality and careless
partiality of the assessments to the sewers rates, see MS. Vestry Minutes,
Marylebone, 7th March 1807. By 1834 the complaints were getting voiced
in the Court itself. At an excited meeting in that year, when some newly
appointed Commissioners attended, one of them said that " immense sums of
money had been levied for sewers rate, and it was a well-known fact that a
certain Commissioner possessing property at Notting Hill, and another at
College Street, Westminster, could have new sewQrs erected without the slightest
difficulty, and that the pickaxe had been set to work to create damage, merely
as an apology for rebuilding." The Chairman (Saunders) refused to submit a
resolution in favour of a certain new sewer, alleging that its construction would
be illegal (The Vestryman, 26th July 1834).
a A fearful description of the accumulation of filth in the poor parts of
Westminster was given to the Home Secretary in 1831 (Domestic State Papers
in Public Record Office, Misc., 1831, pp. 20-24). Even of the wealthy district of
Marylebone it could be said in 1848 that " the sewers wero put in piecemeal as the
streets were formed, without system, and irrespective of the requirements of
adjoining streets and surrounding districts. Their bottoms are flat and wide ; the
levels are very irregular ; many of the sewers have little or no fall whatever,
while a few have a considerable fall, and the bottoms of others run up and down,
forming a series of ridges and hollows. Hence in general they retain most of
the soil drainage of the parish, instead of affording the means of conveying it
away as fast as it is produced. . . . Depth and regularity of fall were not
taken into account. The efficiency of the system was never thought of. So
long as a sewer was put down in front of the houses into which it was possible
to carry a drain that was deemed sufficient ; and is likely to continue to be
so until a combined authority be strictly exercised over all speculative building
operations " (Report of Mr. John Phillips, Surveyor to the Metropolitan Sewers
Commission, on the Report of the Vestry of St. Marylebone on the Sanitary
Condition of the Parish, 1st March 1848). And sec Sanitary Evolution of
London, by H. Jephson, 1907.
OTHER METROPOLITAN COURTS OF SEWERS 85
from Wandsworth to Deptford Creek, which, except for the
Borough of Southwark and a few scattered groups of houses, were
at the end of the seventeenth century only sparsely inhabited ;
and the great river wall surrounding the practically uninhabited
Isle of Dogs, were, at the Revolution, administered almost wholly
by Standing Juries, made up of the local occupiers of farms. On
the other hand, the Tower Hamlets, and Holborn and Finsbury,
districts already covered with suburban streets, were governed,
like Westminster, by Courts of Sewers, in which the principal
part was played by the Commissioners themselves. 1 Moreover,
as the whole area governed by these Courts of Sewers became
(with the exception of the marshes below Greenwich) more
densely populated, we find them all slipping more or less into the
habits of the Westminster Court — reaching, too, at one period
or another, much the same depth of inefficiency, if not of cor-
ruption. This development from administration by judicial
process, through the presentments of Standing Juries of neigh-
bours in Open Court, to administration by executive orders of a
little clique of Commissioners working through secret committees
and salaried servants, without publishing reports or enjoying
public discussion, can be discerned even in the records of the
Commissions of Poplar, St. Katharine and the Tower Hamlets. 2
1 See The Law of Waters and of Sewers, by Humphrey W. Woolrych, 1830 ;
Municipal Origins, by F. H. Spencer, 1911, pp. 242-263.
2 The MS. Minutes of the Tower Hamlets Commissioners of Sewers exist
from 1702 ; those of the Commissioners of Sewers " for the Hospital and Precinct
of St. Katharine " (adjoining the Tower of London) only from 1782, though
this little Commission is mentioned from at least 1720 ; and those of the Poplar
Commissioners for the " limits between Limehouse and Blackwall in the parish
of Stepney . . . commonly called Stebunheath Marsh or Poplar Marsh," from
1629. These Minutes, now in the custody of the London County Council,
afford a rich mine of information. The Blackwall and Poplar and Stebunheath
Marsh Commissioners continued to deal with marshes, and retained the char-
acteristics of the Greenwich Court of Sewers. The Tower Hamlets Commis-
sioners, who met at the " Whitechapel Court House," seem to have been slack
and inefficient (except for the making of one great new sewer), but not obviously
corrupt. It is interesting to note that their procedure and organisation were
remodelled after 1820, by Sir Daniel Williams, on the fines of the Holborn and
Finsbury Commission. The St. Katharine's Commissioners, of whom the
" Master of the Chapter " was ex-officio chairman, dealt only with a small area
(the old precinct of St. Katharine's Hospital), and found themselves, after 1824,
without work, owing to the practical absorption of their district by the St.
Katharine's Dock. There seems but little information as to these Commissions,
outside the Minutes and the Parliamentary Papers of 1823, 1834 and 1847.
See, however, the House of Commons Journals, 23rd February 1797, for two
petitions from the Tower Hamlets Commissioners ; the evidence of Peeke,
Surveyor to the Tower Hamlets Commission, in Report of Select Committee
86 THE COURT OF SEWERS
But these Commissions dealt with relatively small populations,
which, down to 1835, exhibited no such tremendous increase as
was seen to the West and the South. They show, accordingly,
only slight changes in constitution and procedure, interesting
chiefly as illustrations and supplementary examples of the more
marked developments elsewhere. We shall, therefore, not trouble
the reader with our elaborate notes of these Courts, but confine
ourselves to brief accounts of the course of development of the
Commissioners of Sewers of Holborn and Finsbury on the one
hand, and of those of Surrey and Kent on the other.
Holborn and Finsbury
What sort of authority it was that, during the seventeenth
century, looked after the drainage of the fenny districts North
of the City walls, periodically inundated as these were by the
rainstorms from the Hampstead and Highgate Hills, we have no
information. The Minutes of the Court of Sewers " held for the
limits of the Holborn and Finsbury Divisions of the County of
Middlesex " exist only from 1716, ^vhen the Court had been long in
existence, and when most of its district had already become urban
in character. During the whole of the eighteenth century the
constitution and procedure of this Court, though approximating
on the whole to those of the Westminster Court, embodied some
interesting remnants of the earlier type. Like the Westminster
on the State of Large Towns, 1840 ; the Report of tlie Committee (of the Tower
Hamlets Commissioners) on some of the Statements in the . . . Report of the Poor
Law Commissioners on the Sanitary < Condition of the Labouring Population, 1843 ;
and a stray report in Times, Kith February 1828.
It should perhaps be mentioned here that the Act providing for the building
of Regent Street under the Office of Woods and Forests (53 George III. c. 121)
in 1813 contained clauses establishing a separate Commission of Sewers for the
new district. The Regent's Park and Regent Street Commission appears to
have consisted <>f about fifty persons representing principally various Qovern-
menl departments (Reporl <>f House of Commons Committee on the 8ew» ra of
the Metropolis, 1834, p. 12S ; the Crown Estate Paving Act, 1824, 5 George IV.
c. 100).
1 Beyond these minutes, and A Collection of the Public Statutes relating to
Sewers and tlie Local Ada for Holborn and Finsbury Divisions, Middlesex, 1830,
we knew this Court «>f Sewers only from the Parliamentary Papers of 1823,
L831, I S3 4 and 1847, and the somewhat frequent references to its later work,
and tn its energetic Burveyor, John Roe, in the writings <>f Sir Kdv. in I lhadwick.
See, for instance, />'; port of the Poor Lute Commissioners on tin- Sanitary Condition
of the Labouring Population, 1843.
HOLBORN AND FINSBURY 87
Commissioners of the eighteenth century, those of Holborn and
Finsbury were not important landowners, nor yet Court officials,
but men of unknown names and (as we soon discover) parsi-
monious ideas. As in Westminster, they had supplied them-
selves with one or two ill-paid officers, but they relied mainty
on the little master-workmen whom they appointed for Holborn
and Finsbury respectively — local bricklayers, paviors, carpenters
and smiths. They were even behind the Westminster Com-
missioners in that they could not bring themselves, until 1775, 1 to
incur the expense of a surveyor, preferring to exact from their
leading bricklayer, without remuneration, such plans and surveys
of the work to be done by himself or his fellow-craftsmen, or of the
position of the existing sewers, as were absolutely indispensable. 2
As at Westminster, the locally resident Commissioners themselves
ordered the various works, saw to their execution, sent the work-
men's bills to their colleague, the Treasurer, 3 by whom they were
paid, the necessary rates — levied separately for each Common
Sewer equally upon all those who benefited by it 4 — being col-
lected by little officials of the Court itself. But unlike the West-
minster Commissioners, those of Holborn and Finsbury by no
means did the whole of the government. Their Court met only
four times a year, and its proceedings maintain, throughout the
century, a distinctly judicial character. The Commissioners did
little or nothing on their own initiative ; they merely listened to
1 They had some sort of a surveyor in 1720, but when he died, they resolved
to make shift with the bricklayer (MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Holborn
and Finsbury, 4th May 1720, 28th October 1728), and then with the " Summoner
to the Court " (ibid. 18th July 1729). They appointed a surveyor at £30 a
year in 1775 (ibid. 3rd January 1775).
2 These bricklayers, who were paid for their brickwork at per rod, were
required " to do the business of a surveyor to the Court without any gratuity
or reward whatsoever, and that they do not presume to charge more for their
prices and rates . . . than they do to private gentlemen " (ibid. 26th January
1728). For the result on the bricklayers' bills, see ibid. ISth July 1729.
3 In 1756 the Clerk was appointed Treasurer, the " bricklayer to the Court "
and one of the Commissioners serving as his sureties (ibid. 15th April 1756).
Not until 1792 did the Court have a banker, when Child & Co. were appointed
(ibid. 23rd February 1792). The Tower Hamlets Commissioners did not
employ a banker till 1759, when they opened an account with Sir Charles Asgill
& Co. (ibid. Tower Hamlets, 8th March 1759).
4 In 1718 " persons who have cesspools in their respective yards and
gardens " give trouble " by pretending they were not liable to pay the full
tax to any common sewer, but half the said tax." The Court decides that " all
such persons that are liable to be taxed but to one common sewer and no
more, shall be charged with the full tax to the said common sewer " (ibid.
Holborn and Finsbury, 21st October 1718).
88 THE COURT OF SEWERS
complaints by inhabitants and to the long detailed presentments
of their two Juries, relating to all sorts of nuisances. 1 These
Juries were, down to 1778, an important and very effective part
of the organisation. Returned originally by the Sheriff of the
County, they served continuously for five or seven years — until,
in fact, they were discharged by the Court at their own request. 2
Every quarter they made a complete inspection of their respective
districts, apparently as systematic as that made by the Standing
Jury of Greenwich, not only presenting nuisances, but recom-
mending what works, new as well as old, should be undertaken ;
and determining by whom the cost should be borne. Unlike
the two local Juries of Westminster, those of Holborn and Fins-
bury do not seem ever to have had their presentments traversed ;
and we even see them used, not infrequently, for the purpose of
enquiring, like a Traverse Jury, " into the truth of the premises,"
when individuals complained of the annoyances committed by
other persons, or disputed the assessments imposed by the Com-
missioners. On the other hand, differing from the Juries of
Sewers of Greenwich and Somerset, those of Holborn and Fins-
bury took no part in the execution of any works or in the ad-
ministration of any sluices or gates. At the close of each Court,
when they had made their presentments, their function was at
an end until their next periodical survey. They seem, in fact,
to have been a cross between the merely presenting Jury of the
Hundred composed of local neighbours, and the Traverse Jury
of indifferent persons summoned to try indictments.
1 These nuisances comprised not only foul ditches, filthy drains and ob-
structed sewers, but also " houses of office," pigsties, and slaughterhouses.
In 1719 the jury presented a group of persons in " Hog Island," Gray's Inn
Lane, for keeping large numbers of pigs, to the defiling and obstructing of the
sewers. On failing to remove their pigs, they were fined £5 each, duly estreated
into the Court of Exchequer (MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Holborn
and Finsbury, 1st May 1719). One Jeremy Jummins of Shoreditch kept
" between two and three hundred hogs," whereby the common sewer was
" filled up with dirt, dung and soil occasioned by the said hogs." He was
fined £20 [ibid. 21st October 1719). As a contemporaneous example we
may cite that, in the Tower Hamlets Court of Sewers, we have the Jury, in
1706, ordered to go to Spitalficlds "and return such nuisances as they shall
find, and that the surveyor attend the same time, and that the Jury present
the houses of office, and also view of the intended sewers in Church Lane be
annoyed by the hog-house in Whitechapel Field, thereby adjoining " (ibid.
Tower Hamlets, 8th May 1706).
2 " Ordered that the old Juries be discharged . . . according to the prayer
of their petition, they having done good service for the Court between six
and seven years last past " (ibid. Holborn and Finsbury, 19th October 1753).
NEW SEWERS 89
In the last quarter of the eighteenth century we see the con-
stitution and procedure of this Court of Sewers undergoing rapid
changes. In 1778 the Commissioners, who were always at issue
with the Corporation of the City of London (through whose sewers
all their drainage had to pass on its way to the Thames), took
advantage of the Bill which the Corporation promoted for the
benefit of its own estates in Finsbury to secure a great increase
of their own powers. 1 The Commissioners were for the first time
expressly empowered to build new sewers, at any rate where any
trace of an old sewer existed, and to raise a general pound rate
on all occupiers or owners, both without the intervention of a
Jury. These powers had reference, it is true, only to the Fins-
bury Division, but there was nothing to prevent the funds raised
in Finsbury being used for the general expenses of the Commis-
sion. From this date the Commissioners felt relieved from any
necessity for summoning a Jury for Finsbury, whilst that for
Holborn rapidly became a merely formal adjunct of the quarterly
Court, signing the presentments put before them by the clerk,
and (in pursuance of the precedent set by the 1778 Act for Fins-
bury) finding liable to pay the Sewers Rate indiscriminately all
the occupiers or owners within the district. 2 Along with this
1 The Corporation was lessee for 99 years of " the prebendal estate of
Halliwell and Finsbury," which was being laid out for building, and sought
power to make new sewers (by the City Commissioners of Sewers) at its own
expense, subject to the payment by the Holborn and Finsbury Commissioners
of Sewers of a contribution of £150 a year. It was professedly to enable the
Commissioners to raise that sum that they were given power to levy a general
rate, with other incidental powers. See 18 George III. c. 66 (1778) ; MS.
Minutes, Commissioners of Sewers, Holborn and Finsbury, 2nd April and 2nd
May 1777; and (for the quarrels and fights with the Corporation workmen)
16th April and 9th July 1778.
2 No rate was, however, collected in respect of hereditaments on the high
ground towards Hampstead, on the plea, upheld in a case taken to the Court
of King's Bench in 1814, that these lands received no benefit, and were not
protected against any damage by the sewers (Report of House of Commons
Committee on the Sewers of the Metropolis, 1834, p. 12). The Commission
restricted itself, moreover, to such parts of the Holborn and Finsbury Divisions
as were within two miles of the City of London (ibid. pp. 12, 158). The judges
seem to have always felt unable to construe the various Acts of Parliament,
by which the different Metropolitan Sewer Commissions sought to define their
jurisdiction, as giving any power of taxation beyond the limits implied by the
old law of sewers — that is, beyond the area that actually received benefit or
avoided injury by some pre-existing sewer. The high grounds of Surrey got
exemption from the imposts of the Surrey and Kent Commissioners. Nor was
it the high grounds only that claimed exemption. The Tower Hamlets Com-
mission purported to include Hackney, but the Court could seldom get its
rates paid there, both because much of it was beyond two miles from the City
go THE COURT OF SEWERS
shrinking up of the Jury, we see the Commissioners themselves
developing in the course of the next two decades an exclusively
executive organisation. The casual committees of local Com-
missioners are replaced in 1795 by a single standing committee
elected at the opening of each new Commission for the whole
ten years. This standing (or as it is sometimes termed " select ")
committee quickly became the real governing authority. It
met and adjourned whenever it thought fit, engaged officers,
decided on new sewers, entered into contracts, assessed rates,
supervised work and paid the workmen's bills — transacted, in
fact, the whole business of the Commission, merely reporting its
acts for ratification to its own members when, with one or two
more Commissioners, they assembled at Hicks Hall each quarter
as a formal Court of Sewers. These reports (which, unlike those
of Westminster, are entered in full in the minute books) are
interesting to the technical student in the detailed examples they
present of the contemporary problems of drainage, but they yield
little information as to the character and administrative pro-
cedure of this all-powerful executive. From other sources we
learn that the eight or ten members met frequently at the
Crown Tavern in Clerkenwell, and spent about £500 a year on
their entertainments ; that their total disbursements amounted
to many thousands of pounds a year ; that they published
no record of their proceedings, and did not even print a
statement of accoimts ; and that they entered into contracts
for extensive works without advertisement or competitive
tendering. To this we may add that even the formal minutes
reveal a suspicious identity between the surnames of Commis-
sioners, contractors and officials. 1 When in 1812 a Standing
Committee of Accounts was appointed, which might have served
as a check on their proceedings, we see this mamied exclusively
of London, and because it drained into the Lea, and not into tin- Bewers leading
ti> the Thames. A Bturdy resistance by the inhabitants began in ITS.'-, which
led fco interminable litigation, that seems to have gone on spasmodically from
1800 to 1835 (.MS. Minutes, Sewn Commissioners, Tower Samlete, 3rd and
22nd .Inly, 28th August 1788, 5th March, 19th .May, 15th September 1S24,
28th November 1827).
1 In 1774 a vacancy in the office of Clerk and Treasurer was filled by
iIm- appointment of one <>f the Commissioners [ibid. Eolborn and Finsbury,
7th April 1774). In 1775, when at last the Court appoints a Surveyor, he
has the same surname as one of the active Commissioners {ibid. 3rd January
1775).
MAINWARING'S DEFAULT 91
by members of the General Purposes Committee. It remains
to be said that this all-powerful little group included the principal
members of the corrupt clique of Justices of the Peace who were,
in the same years, dominating the Middlesex Quarter Sessions,
and several other local governing bodies in the Metropolitan area.
From 1795 to 1808 the Chairman of the Court was the sancti-
monious banker, William Mainwaring, who was Chairman of
Quarter Sessions. From 1800 the Chairman of the Standing
Committee was his chief henchman, Colonel (afterwards Sir)
Daniel Williams, then newly appointed one of the new stipendiary
magistrates, who followed Mainwaring in the chairmanship of
the Court, whilst retaining his chairmanship of the Standing
Committee. During these years the most regular attender of
its meetings was their friend, Joseph Merceron, the notorious
' boss " of the parish of Bethnal Green, whom we find invariably
present from 1795 onward, when accounts are to be audited,
privileges granted or contracts made. The Holborn and Fins-
bury Commissioners of Sewers were, in fact, travelling fast in the
same direction as the Westminster body. Fortunately they
were pulled up by a catastrophe. In 1812 Mainwaring got
himself elected as Treasurer, and, repeating what he had already
done in the Tower Hamlets and Westminster, immediately trans-
ferred the large current balance kept by the Commissioners from
Child's Bank to his own, which was already on the very brink of
bankruptcy. Within a couple of years the Commissioners found
themselves short of several thousands of pounds which he was
unable to pay ; x and were compelled to levy a " double rate "
on their district. A great uproar arose, and an effective agitation,
headed by Serjeant Wilde, afterwards Lord Truro, and John Wilks,
a leading Finsbury resident. The various Parish Vestries insisted
on the promotion of a Bill to reform the practice and procedure of
the Commissioners, and, in spite of the vigorous protests of the
latter, this Bill became law in 1814. 2 The main interest of the
reformers who obtained the Act was to provide against corrupt
dealings. All work over £50 in value was to be executed by
1 Report of House of Commons Committee on the Sewers of the Metropolis,
1834, p. 17.
2 54 George III. c. 219 ; Hansard, 10th May 1814 ; House of Commons
Journals, 19th November 1813 and 10th May 1814 ; MS. Minutes, Holborn
and Finsbury Sewers Commissioners, 29th July 1814 ; Report of House of
Commons Committee on the Sewers of the Metropolis, 1823, p. 25.
92 THE COURT OF SEWERS
contract, entered into after public advertisement ; the accounts
were to be published and communicated to the Parishes con-
cerned ; all fees of office were abolished ; any Commissioner
personally interested in any case was to withdraw during its con-
sideration ; and the dinner expenses of the Commissioners were
limited to £450 per annum. But the Act is, perhaps, of wider
interest, as marking the final step in the transition from the
old procedure of the Court of Sewers to that of a modern ad-
ministrative body. The powers of rating given in the 1778 Act
were extended to the whole area under the Commissioners. The
antiquated system of Jury presentments was definitely abandoned
and all power of deciding what works should be undertaken and
who should be taxed was expressly vested in the Commissioners,
subject to appeal to Quarter Sessions. And though no authority
to construct new sewers, when no pretence at a sewer had pre-
viously existed, was expressly given, the wording was so wide,
and the Commissioners put so liberal a construction on this
wording, that new sewers were, in fact, constructed under this
Act wherever they were deemed necessary.
The changes in the legal procedure and powers of the Holborn
and Finsbury Commissioners appear to have resulted in a remark-
able rise in their standards of administrative efficiency and
integrity. The formal structure remained almost unchanged,
many of the 150 or so persons named in the Commission never
troubling to qualify, still less to attend. 1 The working con-
stitution was only slightly modified. Instead of one standing
committee, there are henceforth nominally two — the Commis-
sioners for General Purposes and the Commissioners for Audit and
Assessment. But this change was only nominal, as the two
committees were composed of practically the same members,
and had a common chairman, who was also chairman of the
Court. What was revolutionised was the administrative pro-
cedure. The Bank of England became the Treasurer, and full
publicity was given to the accounts, which were printed and
circulated not only to the Commissioners, but also to the local
Vestries. An elaborate code of standing orders was adopted,
and apparently adhered to. A staff of four salaried surveyors
and inspectors was definitely ordered to keep an exact account,
1 About half of them would, however, qualify, which was above (he average.
Wo do not gather that more than a score or ao ever attended.
SIR DANIEL WILLIAMS
93
and to maintain a minute supervision of all the work executed.
All contracts were entered into " in Open Court," after public
advertisement ; and the express statutory prohibition of Com-
missioners or officers being in any way concerned in them seems
to have been obeyed. It is only fair to the memory of Sir Daniel
Williams, whom we have reported as in suspicious company, to
record that these internal reforms seem to have been carried
out by him ; that a few years later he reorganised the Tower
Hamlets Court of Sewers on almost identical lines ; * that he
remained down to 1830 chairman of the Court, and of both its
committees, being until 1828 at least the responsible person for
what was done ; and that we discover nothing during these
years that is otherwise than creditable to him. Finally, we have
to note that the Commission was fortunate enough to secure,
about 1820, first as inspector and then as surveyor, the services
of John Roe, a man of exceptional inventiveness and ability,
who made a real study of the problems of drainage, and who set
himself, between 1825 and 1835, to transform the shapes and
sizes of the Holborn and Finsbury sewers, in accordance with
his own discoveries, getting the Commissioners in 1829-1835 to
adjust the levels, build new sewers, contribute up to a third of
the cost of new sewers made by others, and systematically arch
over the remaining open drains. 2 Thus, we leave the Holborn
and Finsbury Court of Sewers in 1835 in vigorous activity ;
praised by such reformers as Edwin Chadwick ; and cited to
contemporary Parliamentary Committees as the pattern local
governing body in the Metropolis — though it is not clear to us
whether this position was due to its own excellence or merely
to the contrast that it presented to the nadir of inefficiency and
corruption into which other Courts of Sewers, notably that of
Surrey and Kent, had meanwhile sunk.
Surrey and Kent
The Commissioners of Sewers for Surrey and Kent had under
their jurisdiction the whole of the low-lying marshland on the
southern shore of the Thames, between the River Ravensbourne
1 MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Tower Hamlets, 1820-1830 ; Report of
House of Commons Committee on the Sewers of the Metropolis, 1823.
2 Ibid. Holborn and Finsbury, 23rd April 1830; 25th October 1833;
Report of House of Commons Committee of 1834, pp. 13-14, 17.
94 THE COURT OF SEWERS
in Kent and the Ember Branch of the River Mole in Surrey.
We are not concerned here to enquire how it was that this
particular area, extending into two Counties, and comprising
numerous Manors and Parishes, came to be governed as a single
unit. 1 Nor need we do more than call attention to the fact that,
when the earliest minutes begin in 1569, they show us a body of
Commissioners, made up apparently of the principal resident
proprietors of land, superintending and controlling what seem
to be the remnants of older local organisations for the mainten-
ance of sluices and stretches of river wall. There were, as in
Somerset, standing bodies of " Jurats " 2 for different localities,
with bailiffs and collectors ; all sworn to perform the duties of
their offices ; all unpaid and compulsorily serving. The periodi-
cal meetings of the Commissioners, held with all formality as a
Court of Record, and attended, it appears, by the Under Sheriff
for Surrey, 3 served practically only to give ratification and legal
validity to the presentments of the Juries, and opportunities for
appeal.
In 1689, when we take up the story, little had yet been
changed. The district — but for the steadily increasing
" Borough " of South wark and the slowly growing hamlets and
villages that dotted the levels from Deptford to Molesey — was
still essentially common and marsh. The " Court of Sewers ' :
was still composed of the principal landowners, 4 under whose
superintendence three or four Standing Juries, in as many
1 In the earliest minutes the jurisdiction of the Court is stated as " from
the Ravensboumc in the County of Kent to the Church of Putney in the
County of Surrey" (MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Surrey and Kent,
3rd January 15(>9). One volume, Court Minnie* of the Surrey an<l K< ni Sewer
Commission, 1569-1579, has been published by t he L< radon County Council (1909,
352 pp.). Beyond the MS. Minute-;, which extend over nearly three centuries,
we have no sources of information for this Court of Sewers other than the
Parliamentary papers of 1823, 1831, 1834 and L847; a pamphlet entitled
Reports relating to Seivage with reference to Observation* <>f the Poor Law I
inissioners, printed by order of the Court (of Sewers for Surrey and Kent).
1843; and incidental references in the works already cited, especially Old
Southwark, by W. Rendle, 1878, which gives various extracts from the Minuti s.
- So called, for instance, in MS. Minutes, Sewer < ommissioners, Surrey and
Kent. I llh December 1573.
3 MS. Minutes, Sewer I , Surrey and Kent, 9th January 1691.
4 The new Commis ■■< of William and Mary com-
prised ">•> persons, of whom '.'■'> were of the quorum. They included one
five baronets, ten knights, 27 "esquires" and 13 "gentlemen" (MS. Minutes.
Sewer Commissioners, Surrey and Kent, 29th AugUBl 1689). Anion;,' them
were John Evelyn and bis eld >s1 i i, of Deptford and Wotton {ibid. 9th June
SURREY AND KENT 95
different districts, 1 were periodically viewing all the ditches,
sluices and embankments, presenting defects, amercing de-
faulters, and through their respective Foremen, not infrequently
superintending the sluice-keepers and supervising the execution
of the work done by the various " Scavelmen." 2 We watch
these jurymen, who served for about four years each, individually
bringing " their several and respective presentments " to their
Foreman, three days at least before the Court Day, in order that
he may prepare them and combine them with his own, for their
joint signature. 3 We see the several Juries assessing the par-
ticular lands benefited by each specific work, and also levying
a general rate on a particular marsh or a particular " level " for
works performed for its own common advantage. These rates
were payable to special local Expenditors. 4 But the Com-
missioners were already taking some matters into their own
hands. They would periodically of their own authority order
the levy of a " General Tax " on all the lands and houses through-
out the whole district of the Commission, directing " that the
several Juries do against the next Court bring in lists of all the
owners and occupiers . . . within their respective limits." 5
This General Tax was paid to their own " Expenditor-General,"
1G91 ; " To Greenwich being put into the new Commission of Sewers," is an
entry of 1685 in Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, 1862, vol. ii. p. 255) ;
and as we incidentally learn elsewhere, Elias Ashmole, the antiquary (Memoirs
of the Life of Elias Ashmole, edited by Charles Burman, 1717, pp. 53, 76).
1 Apparently the extension of the district of this Court of Sewers into two
Counties made necessary two panels of jurymen, returned by the Sheriffs of
Kent and Surrey respectively. The Surrey panel was, time out of mind, in
two parts, one for the Eastern and the other for the Western division of the
marshes within that county. Between 1695 and 1698 a fourth Jury seems to
have formed for " the Level of Earl Sluice."
2 Scavelmen were men employed to " cast " or cleanse the ditches.
3 MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Surrey and Kent, 20th March 1694.
4 In 1701 Isaac Loader of Deptford, a local freeholder, is appointed " Ex-
penditor of the Level of Church Marsh," and also to take charge of the Church
Marsh Sluice (ibid. 23rd May 1701).
6 " Ordered that all the Commissioners in this Commission be summoned
to the next Court of Sewers in order to lay a tax upon all the levels within the
limits of this Commission " (ibid. 9th September 1691, also 24th September
1708). This " General Tax " was disputed between 1703 and 1712, especially
by the parish of Christchurch, but precedents back to Elizabeth's reign were
produced, and the tax was maintained and enforced by distress of double the
amount due, at so much per acre on land, and so much in the pound on the
annual value of messuages and tenements (ibid. 3rd March, 16th and 23rd
September, and 26th November 1703, 6th March and 28th September 1704,
27th September 1711, and 12th October 1712).
96 THE COURT OF SEWERS
who was a member of the Court. They had, in their own em-
ployment, besides the staff of Sluice-keepers, Wall-reeves and
: ' Scavelmen," a Clerk, two Bailiffs and Cryers, and various
collectors. In case of any serious breach in the river wall, or an
important sluice, the Commissioners sent their Committee to
view the damage and contract for its immediate repair. On
complaint of any presentment of a Jury, they would depute
some of their number to join with the Jury in a new view ; 1 or,
less frequently, they would permit the complainant to traverse
the presentment, and have it tried by a specially summoned
Jury. 2 Moreover, the Jury for the Western District, or Wands-
worth, as it was called, was habitually so dilatory in its action,
and so partial in its presentments, that the Commissioners were
coming more and more to supersede it, by the executive pro-
ceedings of their own members and their own local officers. Yet,
for a whole generation after the Revolution, the large land-
owners who constituted the Court seemed always anxious to
stimulate the initiative, maintain the vitality and secure the
co-operation of the local Juries of their tenants, and to continue
their reputation as an open Court of Justice, in which any one
could obtain redress against partiality or remedy for misunder-
standing. 3 During the first half of the eighteenth century, we
note a gradual change in the working constitution. The local
Juries increase in number, but sink in importance ; any parish
that presses for a Jury of its own is apparently allowed to have
one, until, eventually, there are about a dozen separate Juries.
Their presentments become perfunctory and superfluous. Their
chief function comes to be that of assessing the owners and
occupiers liable to pay the general and special rates, level by
1 Upon information of a defective sluico in 1690, four named Commissioners
are deputed " to meet to-morrow morning at nine of the clock at Mr. Cave's
at the Bunch of Grapes, near the said sluice and from there to take a view of
the said sluice with six or more of the East Jury of Sewers " (MS. Minutes,
Sewer Commissioners, Surro}' and Kent, 21st January 1690).
2 We gather that the Traverso Jury, unlike the ordinary Jury of Sewers,
received the customary common juryman's fee for each day's attendance.
Persons presented took advantage of the privilege of traversing, by getting
their cases removed by certiorari to the Court of King's Bench, when neither
party troubled to take further proceedings. The Court, therefore, engaged an
attorney to take the necessary steps (ibid. 9th Juno 1691 and 8th April 1692).
3 In 1704 it is "ordered that no motion be made whereby anything is
granted by this Court to any particular person (other than a view), unless
whilst the Jury are present, and therefore that the same be done before dinner "
(ibid. 19th December 171)!).
DETERIORA TION 97
level, and eventually parish by parish. 1 The number of Com-
missioners meanwhile increases, and we become aware of a
certain jostling of the smaller folk to obtain the privilege of
acting as Commissioners. The noblemen, baronets and knights
cease to attend the meetings, and presently cease even to qualify
by taking the oaths. The open Court of Sewers held periodically
with the paraphernalia of a Court of Justice, is supplemented,
if not practically superseded, by numerous adjournments,
:c Special Courts," " Audit Courts," and committee meetings,
held at various taverns in different parts of the district, at which
the attendance of the Jury is dispensed with, and at which all
sorts of business may be transacted. 2 When a particular indi-
vidual wants a " view," this is now made by a small committee
of the Commissioners without any members of the Jury. Even
general inspections are so made. 3 Gradually the characteristic
feature of " assessment according to benefit " is abandoned ;
particular works are done at the common expense ; from 1758
onwards even the levels cease to have their own rates ; and
everything becomes chargeable to the General Tax, levied by
order of the Court itself, collected by a single collector over the
whole area and received and disbursed by the Expenditor-
General. 4 Coincidently with these changes of procedure, there
are unmistakable signs of the petty jobbery usual at the period :
the Chairman himself supplies chalk to the Court ; 5 another
active Commissioner fills the post of " carpenter in chief to the
Court " ; 6 persons amerced by the Jury for defaults frequently
qualify as Commissioners at the next meeting of the Court, when
they invariably have their amercements discharged ; 7 persons
1 For a short time they were even paid a percentage on the amount of their
assessments; being, in 1757, expressly "allowed after the rate of 4d. in the
pound on the gross amount of such rate for their expenses " (MS. Minutes,
Sewer Commissioners, Surrey and Kent, 22nd September 1757).
2 Already in 1704 we see an " Audit Court " taking executive action in an
emergency. " The Foreman of the Eastern Jury reporting that the flap of
Duffield Sluice being blown off, and the Level in danger of drowning, he went
down upon the information of the sluice-keeper at 12 o'clock at night and
secured the same for that time ; but being still in great danger, ordered that
the Foreman direct the further securing of the same and employ proper work-
men ; the Expenditor to disburse the money and the Clerk to charge upon
Duffield Sluice account " (ibid. 2nd February 1704).
3 Ibid. 11th October 1715. * Ibid. 22nd June 1758.
5 Ibid. 7th January and 3rd February 1740.
6 Ibid. 27th May and 18th June 1747.
7 Ibid. 19th January 1749 and 19th July 1750.
H
98 THE COURT OF SEWERS
who are not Commissioners, but who commit nuisances annoying
tenants of Commissioners, are so severely and partially dealt with
that they get redress from the Court of King's Bench; 1 whilst
we see other Commissioners obtaining from complacent colleagues
special views of this or that bank or sewer, the repair of which
they get cast upon the general rate of the level. 2 Whenever one
of the little paid offices falls vacant, there is an unseemly scramble
to appoint a successor before the other Commissioners, who do
not happen to be present, can even become aware of the oppor-
tunity of serving their own friends. 3 It would, indeed, be
hardly an exaggeration to say that, between 1727 and 1771,
the minutes themselves reveal that appointments, contracts,
exemptions and privileges are habitually influenced by the
presence at the meeting of some interested party. But, down
to 1771 at any rate, all these mean dealings amounted to very
small sums, and were of little concern to the public at large.
From the standpoint of the common good the most serious
indictment against the Commissioners during this period is the
short-sighted parsimony in the expenditure of rates, and dislike
for regulation, which was permitting the ditches to become foul
by unrestricted houses of office ; clusters of squalid cottages to
be run up destitute of any drains whatsoever ; and whole areas to
be infested by unregulated tan-yards and slaughter-houses, and the
keeping of hundreds of swine ; whilst streets and streets of miser-
able houses were being built actually below the level of the river.
By 1771, however, the pressure of new buildings and the
1 MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Surrey and Kent, 9th June and
11th August 1763.
2 Ibid. 25th September 1707. In this the Surrey and Kent Commissioners
surreptitiously anticipated, by more than a century, a general movement. In
the Isle of Dogs the whole of the repairs, works and maintenance " requisite
for the protection of the level " were, by common agreement, in 1828, thrown
upon the general rate, and " the repair of works by reason of tenure " was
abolished {ibid. Poplar, 22nd March 1828). During the nineteenth century
all such sewers rates were, throughout the Metropolis, increasingly thrown
on the tenant, by the landlord's conditions of occupancy. And, in 1899,
without any provision for adjustment of rent or other compensation, Parlia-
ment, incidentally, and without notice or discussion, transferred the burden
from thfl landlord to the occupier, even where, by the agreement of tenancy,
the landlord had hitherto paid the rale (London Government Act. 1899, 62 &
(>.'$ Vie. o. 14. sec. 10) — a curiously arbitrary interference with existing con-
tracts which in ay one day be cited as a precedent !
3 MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Surrey and Kent, 4th September 1771,
20th March 177S. For late cases of the same scram blintr, see ,//,'/. 20th December
180-4 and 27th Ootober 1808.
REORGA NISA TION 99
terrible character of the nuisances that were being produced,
forced the Commissioners into greater activity over a small part
of their immense district. An Act of Parliament obtained for
the Borough of Southwark, which established a body of Street
Commissioners, incidentally gave power to the Surrey and Kent
Commissioners of Sewers to make new sewers, and to levy a
uniform rate, without the intervention of a Jury. 1 From this
time forward we see a rapid development of executive structure
and function. A standing committee is appointed, four sur-
veyors are engaged and contracts for new works are entered into. 2
A public office is opened for the transaction of the rapidly growing
work, which was increased, not only by the increasing demands
of builders for permission to connect with the sewers, but also by
the undertaking, in 1793, by the Commissioners themselves of the
cleansing and scouring of their own sewers. 3 The peculiar feature
is the growth in importance, in all this development, of the office
of Expenditor-General. The Commissioner who fills this unpaid
post gradually becomes the chief executive officer of the Court.
He not only received and expended all the income, now amounting
to several thousands of pounds, and advanced money at four per
cent when the revenue was behindhand ; but he ordered works,
supervised their execution by direct employment of labour, and
was apparently regarded as the person responsible for the proper
maintenance of all banks and sluices. 4 By the time we come to the
1 11 George III. c. 17 (1771). The Commissioners of Sewers had to content
themselves until 1809 with this power, though they sought in 1787 to get a
Local Act of their own, which the opposition of the Vestries prevented (MS.
Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Surrey and Kent, 23rd May 1787 ; MS. Vestry
Minutes, Deptford, Kent, 1788).
2 MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Surrey and Kent, 13th June 1771.
It did not seem objectionable to the Court that its surveyors should, for repair
work, have a standing general authority to employ such local tradesmen as
they thought fit {ibid. 30th May 1823).
3 Ibid. 7th March 1793.
4 In 1771, possibly in consequence of some legal decision, the Juries were
directed to omit from their assessments all " high ground on an ascent," as
this could not derive any benefit, or be protected from any injury, from the
sewers {ibid. 13th June 1771). In practice the Court, in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, restricted its area of jurisdiction for all purposes to the
low-lying marsh lands at about the Thames level (Report of House of Commons
Committee on the Sewers of the Metropolis, 1834, p. 90). In the sixteenth
century there was no such limitation of the Court's jurisdiction, at any rate
as regards its regulative and judicial functions. In 1573, for instance, the
inhabitants of Streatham were amerced for not scouring a sewer, and even the
inhabitants of Croydon for not repairing a local bridge (MS. Minutes, Sewer
Commissioners, Surrey and Kent, 11th December 1573).
ioo THE COURT OF SEWERS
nineteenth century, the work was increasing by leaps and bounds.
The whole low-lying area between the river bank and the rising
ground of Brixton was being rapidly covered with houses. In the
years 1809, 1810 and 1813, the flooding of the low-lying houses
was felt to be so intolerable that a conference representing no
fewer than sixteen of the Parish Vestries pressed the Commis-
sioners to undertake the systematic construction of main sewers,
at the expense of a common rate. The Commissioners thereupon
obtained power to borrow up to £100,000, execute the works and
levy a shilling rate. 1 With the advent of these new powers the
last remnant of a judicial character departs from the Commis-
sioners. All pretence at holding an open Court of Record is
abandoned. The Juries cease to be summoned, their present-
ments being replaced by reports of the different surveyors
appointed by the Commissioners, which retain the old name. 2
There is appointed, perhaps in imitation of the Holborn and Fins-
bury Commission, a Standing Committee for General Purposes,
on whom complete executive power is cast. 3 But all the real
power and authority is now concentrated in the Expenditor-
General, who actually combines with this post those of Chairman
of the Court, Chairman of the General Purposes Committee and
Chairman of all other Committees. 4 He orders the works. It is
expressly provided that he may sue and be sued on behalf of the
Court, 5 and we find him presented for defects in the sewers. It
becomes plain that corruption on a large scale sets in. Particular
landowners and particular builders on the Commission get made
what drains they need. The work is done by contract without
publicity, without tendering and without any real check on prices
or on quality. No sort of regulation is enforced as to the
provision of drainage for houses, new or old. Moreover, when
1 49 George III. c. 183 (1809) ; 50 George III. c. 144 (1810) ; and 53
George III. c. 79 (1813) ; as to which see House of Lords Journals, 12th Juno
1809 ; House of Commons Journals, 9th December 1812 and 21st May 1813 ;
and .MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Surrey and Kent, 13th July, 3rd and
22nd August, 21st September and 20th December 1809, 22nd February, 26th
April, 21st June and 5th July 1810. These Acts applied only to the Eastern
part of the Commissioners' district, from Deptford to Clapham inclusive.
2 After 1811, tin ('unimissioners ceased to give the formal instructions t"
the Under-Sh<'rilT to retain jumrs. Juries were, however, summoned in
exceptional cases in ISJ4 and 1830 (MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Surrey
and Kent, ItHli November L824, 8th November 1830).
'• I hi, I. i Vt 1 1 May 1813.
Ibid. 25th August 1820. 8 49 George III. c. 183, sec. 59.
PROFLIGATE EXPENDITURE 101
any particular site was ready to be built upon, the landowner
or speculative builder would offer to construct the necessary
sewers at his own expense, provided that the Commissioners would
make him a grant ; and the Commissioners, at a hole and corner
meeting, without notice, without previous report, without expert
examination, without system or rule, would make him a grant
of public money to improve his own building estate, of whatever
amount might please the all-powerful Chairman or the particular
knot of Commissioners who happened to be present. 1 Exactly
the same course was followed in voting compensation to persons
who alleged that they had suffered by the Commissioners' action
— compensation to persons who had fallen into sewer excavations,
or for damage caused by the falling in of sewers ; compensation
to tradesmen because the road was blocked by sewer works ; com-
pensation for injury caused by floods. 2 The funds necessary for
this profligate expenditure were borrowed by the Commissioners
from their officers, from their friends, and from themselves indi-
vidually, at such rates of interest or upon such annuity payments
as they were pleased to allow to each other. 3 Under these circum-
stances it is not surprising to find that, by 1825, the Surrey and
Kent Commissioners — in this respect unique among Courts of
Sewers— had piled up a debt of £33,691, by 1833 one of £67,722,
and by 1834 one of no less than £81,722 ; 4 and that they were
levying at the latter date a revenue of more than £12,000 a year ;
whilst still leaving the crowded slums of Southwark, the squalid
cottages of Walworth Common, the mean streets of Lambeth
and the vile purlieus of Vauxhall without any effective system
of underground drainage whatsoever. " In all that thickly
peopled area," it was said in 1832, " the channels and ditches
1 Report of House of Commons Committee on the Sewers of the
Metropolis, 1834, p. 96. " I found," reports a zealous member of Parlia-
ment in 1834, " that this Court was composed of a number of gentlemen
sitting at a long table and gossiping . . . instead of attending to business.
. . . The only person who really took the matter into consideration was the
Surveyor " (ibid.).
2 MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Surrey and Kent, 24th July 1806.
3 Ibid. 5th August 1813, 23rd December 1814, 13th October 1815, etc.
The rule was to borrow two-thirds of the cost of new works, charging the
balance to the current rate (Report of House of Commons Committee on the
Sewers of the Metropolis, 1834, p. 93).
4 MS. Minutes, Sewer Commissioners, Surrey and Kent, end of volume for
1818-1825; 25th January 1833; Report of House of Commons Committee
on the Sewers of the Metropolis, 1834, pp. 87, 92.
io2 THE COURT OF SEWERS
for carrying off the water remain in their natural state, overflow-
ing with filth and impurity." 1
The Court of Sewers in 18S5
At this point we have to break off the story of the Commis-
sioners of Sewers, though in their case the years 1832-1835 do
not constitute any particular era, of reform or otherwise. The
reader of the preceding pages — remembering perhaps fierce out-
breaks of revolt and agitations for reform that we have described
with regard to the Close Vestries and the Municipal Corporations
— will ask why no corresponding movement arose against the
Commissioners of Sewers.
It must, in the first place, be remembered that the vast
majority of the Courts of Sewers — practically all those outside
the Metropolitan area — excited, in 1835, no animadversion ;
their very existence being, indeed, then as now, unknown to
any one not immediately concerned with the drainage of the
particular lands. To no one in 1835 did they seem a class, or to
belong to Local Government at all. The works and the levies
of each of them had become matters of routine, consented to by
every one aware of them. The service was, in fact, in each case,
still in the hands of those who paid for it, who could thus spend
as much or as little on it as seemed to suit their interests. But
in the Metropolitan area, where the eight Courts of Sewers (ex-
clusive of the City of London) were, by 1835, expending nearly
£100,000 a year, 2 and where, as we have seen, glaring abuses
were rife, we are ourselves somewhat surprised that there should,
in these years, have been so little protest against the proceedings
of such " arbitrary, irresponsible and unconstitutional " bodies,
violating, as was said, " the fundamental principles of our law
that a man shall not be taxed without the consent of himself
or his representatives." 3 There were, indeed, many obvious
resemblances between the Commissioners of Sewers and the
Justices of the Peace, about whom exactly the same constitu-
tional objections could be made, and who were, in these very
1 Tlie Extraordinary /liar/.- Book; 1832 edition, p. 670.
2 See the ti^un-s <riveii for live of these Courts, in Local Goccrnment in the
Metropolis, 1835, p. 1!>.
3 Evidence of a witness, in Report of House of Commons Committee on
the Sewers of the Metropolis, 1834, pp. 83-84.
THE COURT IN 1835 103
years, being stripped of some of their powers. 1 Both, in form
appointed by the Crown, had become, in effect, close bodies,
homogeneous in class, renewing themselves by co-option. Under
the pressure of new duties, both had practically given up ad-
ministration by judicial process, thereby losing the popular
element implied by the use of the Jury and the transaction of
business " in Open Court." In both cases the machinery of a
Court of Justice had been replaced by standing administrative
committees, meeting behind closed doors, unchecked by public
reports or open discussions, and acting through salaried officials.
And to complete the resemblance, both constitutions had broken
down in the Metropolitan area, which had, as regards both the
Commission of the Peace and the Commission of Sewers, become
the happy hunting-ground of similar, if not identical, gangs of
self-seeking building speculators, architects, surveyors and others
who could make a profit out of them, whilst the agents of the
great estates, keen only on getting for their owners the maximum
benefit from the sewers and on contributing as little as possible to
their cost, had every motive for not making themselves objection-
able to the other Commissioners by resenting their minor par-
tialities and corrupt bargains. 2
To whatever cause we may attribute it, there was, in 1835,
as yet no general feeling and no public agitation for the reform of
the Commissioners of Sewers. Various Bills had been from time
to time introduced for enlarging their powers ; and a Committee
of the House of Commons was appointed in 1823, which heard
the evidence only of representatives of the Commissioners them-
1 As to the feeling against the Justices of the Peace, and " why the Justices
survived," see The Parish and the County, 1907, Book ii. chap. vi. pp. 556-607.
2 Even a superficial comparison of the lists reveals many persons serving
on several of the Metropolitan Commissions. Local propinquity may explain
the fact that a great many of the Commissioners for Poplar and St. Katharine's
were also Commissioners for the Tower Hamlets. But we fear that the presence
of the Mainwarings and the Mercerons on the Commissions for Westminster,
Holborn and Finsbury and Tower Hamlets, if not also on others, was more
equivocal ; whilst it is, to say the least of it, suspicious to find so many persons
interested in building estates, like the Rhodes family, and so many architects
and estate agents, like the Donaldsons and Cockerells, on several Commissions.
We have already referred to the simultaneous Chairmanship of Sir Daniel
Williams in both the Tower Hamlets and the Holborn and Finsbury Com-
missions. The clerks and surveyors of one body were often themselves members
of others. Other persons on several Commissions whose interests we do not know
were George Byng, M.P., and Luke Thomas Flood. Lists of the above-named
Commissions (but not of that of Surrey and Kent) are printed in the reports
of the House of Commons Committees of 1S23 and 1834.
io 4 THE COURT OF SEWERS
selves, and had not time to make any recommendations. 1 In
1833 a general Bill promoted by the friends of the Commissioners
actually became law, which did not in any way reform the ad-
ministration of the peccant Courts of Sewers in the Metropolis,
and by which many of the archaic formalities of these Courts
throughout the country were dispensed with, whilst their powers
of direct administration, and of assessment and enforcement of
rates, were greatly increased. No opposition seems to have been
made to conferring these new powers on the Surrey and Kent
Commissioners, any more than on those for Greenwich, though,
significantly enough, we do find the various Middlesex Commis-
sioners expressly excluded from its scope. 2 In the following year
a strong House of Commons Committee for the first time dragged
to light the ineptitudes and malpractices of the Westminster
Commissioners, and with them those of the Surrey and Kent, and
other Metropolitan Courts of Sewers. Even then the Committee
could not see its way even to suggest disturbing the existing
Courts as tbe sewer authorities, though it did propose that tbe
Commissioners should for the future cease to be appointed, in
form, by the Crown ; which the Committee saw to mean, in
practice, a close body co-opting its successors. The only alter-
native that could be found was, as vacancies occurred, to let the
Vestries of the several parishes in rotation appoint members in
proportion to their respective populations and rentals. 3 The
reputation of the Metropolitan Vestries, open or close, was,
however, at that moment so bad that this proposal evoked no
enthusiasm. The importance to the health of a city of a complete
system of underground drainage was, in spite of the cholera of
1831-1832, still undiscovered. The Members of Parliament, like
the reformers outside, were, moreover, staggered by the magni-
tude of the engineering problem presented by the drainage of so
huge an area as London, and bewildered by the technicalities and
conflicting opinions of the budding experts on the sizes and shapes
of drains, the respective values of gulley-holes, grates and traps,
1 Report of House of Commons Committee on the hewers of the .Metropolis,
No. 542 of 1823.
2 3 & 4 William IV. c. 22 (1833). There were, however, separate Local Acts
for the Westminster Commission in 1834 (4 & 5 William IV. c. 96) and 1847
(10 & 11 Vic. c. 70).
8 Report of House of Commons Committee on the Sewers of the Metropolis,
No. 584 of 1834.
THE "HOUSE OF OFFICE" 105
and the mysteries of hydraulics, whilst they were terrified at the
newly discovered insinuating ways and explosive vagaries of
sewer gas. It must be remembered, in extenuation of this help-
lessness — and indeed, in partial excuse for the inefficiency of the
Sewer Commissioners — that what was being required of them
was, not the work of land drainage for which they had been
established, but an entirely new service demanding for its efficient
performance both a science and a technique not then in existence.
In addition to keeping out the high tides and facilitating by open
ditches the flow of the storm water from the hills, the Commis-
sioners of Sewers, in the course of a century and a half, had found
themselves tacitly required to transport by underground channels,
not only the rapid flow of surface water from many miles of paved
streets, but, what was still more unprecedented, the whole excreta
of a densely populated city. 1 In other parts of England other
Local Authorities were beginning to grapple with the same problem,
if on a smaller scale. Close Corporations like that of Liverpool,
Street Commissioners elected by rate-payers as at Leeds and
Manchester, special bodies recruited by co-option as at Plymouth
were at work, in no case making much headway in their course.
In the Metropolitan area the problem was not only intensified
by its magnitude, but was seemingly all the more insoluble
because of the inability of any particular parish or district
to manage its drainage by itself. No authority could be ex-
pected to make a good job of London main drainage so long
as it was divided among half-a-dozen separate bodies, differing
among themselves about the sizes, shapes and levels of the
sewers and maintaining altogether different standards of efficiency.
It is therefore not so surprising as it at first sight appears that
even to the reformers of the Close Vestries and Municipal
Corporations it was impossible to get up any enthusiasm over
1 The connection of " houses of office " with the sewers continued in London
to be nominally forbidden and spasmodically prevented, down to about 1811.
The assumption long continued that none but liquid matter should pass from
the cesspools into the sewers. The change of policy came with the general
adoption, between 1800 and 1840, of water-closets, in all but the poorer houses
of the Metropolis. It was only in these years that the word " sewer " obtained
its present malodorous meaning. "A Sewer," had said the old authorities,
'■' 13 a fresh Water Trench or little River, encompass'd with Banks on both
sides " (The Laws of Sewers or the Office and Authority of Commissioners of
Sewers, 1726, pp. 25, 26 ; also Tomlins' Law Dictionary, 1820, and Municipal
Origins, by F. H. Spencer, 1911, pp. 242-263. For the history, see Water
Closets, a Historical, Mechanical and Sanitary Treatise, by Glenn Brown, 1884).
106 THE COURT OF SEWERS
a proposal to change the constitution of particular Courts of
Sewers. Ten years later public feeling became almost suddenly-
intense, and we see the Metropolitan Courts of Sewers, sunk
still deeper into inefficiency — we fear, with partiality and
corruption added — summarily swept away in 1848 by a brand-
new Commission of Sewers for the whole Metropolis ; we watch
this gentlemanly but futile body of Crown nominees, constantly
changing in constitution and membership, driven hither and
thither by the rival projects for dealing with the Metropolitan
sewage, 1 and in 1855 abruptly superseded by the indirectly elected
Metropolitan Board of Works ; itself destined, in another genera-
tion, to be condemned for corruption, and replaced, in 1889, by
the directly elected London County Council. It is one more
example of the complicated evolution of English Local Govern-
ment that we should have to recognise, as the ancestors of the
largest, the most democratic in form and the most powerful of the
world's great city governments, both the little knot of Court
officials who after the Restoration met in Westminster Hall,
and the groups of peasant farmers who, in the grey morning mists,
had, time out of mind, walked the marshes of Wandsworth and
Greenwich.
1 " Within nine years after its formation, the Metropolitan Commission of
Sewers was six times superseded, and six new and differently constituted Com-
missions were successively appointed " (" On the Main Drainage of London,"
by (Sir) J. W. Bazalgctte, in Proceedings of the Institute of Civil Engineers,
vol. xxiv., 1865, p. 284. See Sanitary Evolution of London, by H. Jephson,
1907 ; Municipal Origins, by F. H. Spencer, 1911).
We may add here a belated reference to an incident described on p. 38.
A few days before William Pitt hurried to Romney Marsh in 1804 to arrange
for its instant flooding on the French invasion, Sir John Moore,- then at Sand-
gate, close by, was writing in the following terms to Creevey : " We under-
stand that Government have positive information that we are to be invaded,
and I am told that Pitt believes it. The experience of the last twelve moot lis
has taught me to place little confidence in the information or belief of Ministers,
ami as the undertaking seems to me so arduous, and offering so little prospecl
of success, I cannot persuade myself that Bonaparte will be mad enough to
attempt it. He will continue to threaten, by which means alone he can do
us barm. Tho invasion would, I am confident, end in our glory and in Lis
disgrace " (General Sir John Moore, August 27, 1804, in The Creevey Papers,
1904, vol. i. p. 29).
CHAPTER II
THE INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
The seventeenth century saw the inauguration of a new series
of Local Authorities, established in particular places by separate
Acts of Parliament for a specific purpose, namely, the local
administration of the Poor Law. These Local Authorities,
which came to number in all about 125, bore slightly differing
titles (such as Guardians, Trustees, Governors, Directors or
Corporation of the Poor) ; but we may include them all under
the common designation of Incorporated Guardians of the Poor.
Local governing bodies of this kind, deliberately formed for
permanence, exercising new powers under their own Local Acts,
having their own officers and their own revenues, and forming
thus distinct corporations, require a chapter to themselves —
the more so as they exhibit, both in their legal constitutions and
in their working procedure, peculiar characteristics of their own,
and mark an important stage in the development of English
Local Government. But their study presents difficulties. The
Courts of Sewers, which we have already described, like the
Turnpike Trusts with which we shall subsequently deal, were
bodies unconnected with the then existing Local Government
structure ; assumed to be temporary in character ; thrust by
Parliament in between the Parish and the County, and capable
therefore of being easily studied as separate entities. On the
other hand we find the new bodies of Incorporated Guardians
of the Poor invariably structurally connected with existing
Local Government authorities. They were, in most cases,
practically autonomous federations of parish authorities,
urban or rural ; in a few instances they were little more than
statutory committees of the Municipal Corporation ; in others
107
108 INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
again, mere outgrowths of the Close or Open Vestry of a single
parish. Further, unlike the Court of Sewers and the Turnpike
Trust, the Incorporated Guardians were not merely endowed
with newly devised powers ; they always had transferred to
them some of the powers and obligations that had previously
belonged to the Parish ; and, occasionally, some of those of the
County. Their story, moreover, much more than that of the
Court of Sewers, or that of the Turnpike Trust, is inextricably
interwoven with the history of the function to which they were
devoted. 1 It is impossible to give any clear vision of the origin
of the Incorporated Guardians of the Poor, of their legal con-
stitutions and actual working, or of the success and failure of
their Organisation, without trenching upon an important episode
in the history of the Relief of Destitution, namely, the attempt
to establish self-supporting institutions for the employment of
the able-bodied poor, the industrial education of children and
the correction of idle and disorderly persons. We hope, in a
1 " We would further remark that the nature and extent of a Local Act
for the relief of the poor appear to be often misunderstood. It is not infre-
quently assumed that the existence of a Local Act places a parish under a
separate system of law with respect to the relief of the poor. This assumption,
however, is thoroughly erroneous, and is repugnant to the entire spirit and
effect of the local legislation of this country. Like other Local Acts, a Local
Act for the relief of the poor presupposes the general law on the subject, and
only modifies or adds to it in certain specified particulars. The legal pre-
sumption is that the general law prevails everywhere ; and this presumption
can only be repelled by the existence of a provision in a Special Act clearly
derogating from the general law with respect to the district. Thus the general
law of rating, settlement, removal and the like prevails over the whole country ;
but Local Acts have established varieties in the constitution of the body which
administers relief, the mode of its appointment, the authorities by which the
rate is collected, and other such matters. A Local Act, therefore, is not (as
the expressions used on the subject sometimes seem to imply) an entire poor-
law code for a certain district ; but it is merely a fragment of legislation,
modifying and supplying the general law in a few specified heads, for the most
part relating to the mode of its administration. Thus the local poor-law
legislation for Leeds consists only of a clause in an Act for lighting and cleans-
ing, which directs that, in the Borough of Leeds, the number of Overseers of
the Poor appointed under the 43 Elizabeth shall not be limited to four, as
under that statute. In like manner the Local Act for Salisbury only
the management of the united parishes in a body of Churchwardens and Over-
seers appointed for the several parishes according to the 43 Elizabeth. A
scale might be formed, commencing with such simple and meagre provisions
as these, and rising to the more complex and elaborate legislation of Maryle-
bonc, in which lattor parish there are several Local Acts in force, regulating
the poor-law administration. Even, however, where the local legislation is
most voluminous it is a mere fragment as compared with the mass of the
general poor-law statutes which affect the parish " (Ninth Annual Report of
Poor Law Commissioners, 1843, p. 22).
"SETTING THE POOR TO WORK" 109
future volume on English Local Government in relation to
Poverty and Vagrancy, to describe these interesting experiments
as part of the history of the Poor Law. In the present chapter
we can do no more than allude to them in so far as they bear on
the origin, the varieties of constitution, and the success and
failure of the bodies of Incorporated Guardians themselves.
The 125 Incorporated Guardians of the Poor were established
not by any general statute, but by separate Acts of Parliament —
numbering, with amending statutes, over two hundred — which,
because they were classed as Local Acts, have been almost
ignored by historians. 1 These statutes extend over nearly two
centuries, beginning with the Commonwealth Ordinance of 1647,
for establishing the " Corporation of the Poor of the City of
London," and ending with Acts of 1831-1833 reorganising the
Unions of city parishes in Birmingham, Leicester, Norwich and
Gloucester.
The new Local Authorities thus established tried, as we shall
see, a whole series of experiments in dealing with the destitute,
from which much was gradually learnt. Their experience in
workhouse management was the means by which the idea of
" setting the poor to work," as a possible way of providing their
own maintenance, was finally disposed of. Moreover, their
constitutional structure was found, as one of the Poor Law
reformers of 1834 remarked, to embody " principles of organisa-
tion which, with some modifications, may be made both bene-
ficially and generally applicable." 2 It was from these statutory
Poor Law Authorities that was derived the machinery of adminis-
tration by committees, for unions of parishes, through salaried
officials, with the workhouse in the background, out of which
was constructed the Poor Law reform of 1834. Indeed, it is
scarcely too much to say that their peculiar " principle of com-
bining an elective controlling power with a paid executive " 3
1 They are, for instance, not dealt with in the voluminous History of the
English Poor Law, by Sir George Nicholls. Practically the only study of these
Local Acts relating to the Poor Law is that of Mr. F. H. Spencer in his Municipal
Origins, 1911 (chap. vii. pp. 281-308) ; but the Second, Ninth and Tenth
Annual Reports of the Poor Law Commissioners, 1836, 1843 and 1844, inci-
dentally afford much information.
2 Captain Chapman's report on Statutory Poor Law Authorities in Appen-
dix A of First Report of the Poor Law Inquiry Commissioners, 1834, pp.
522-523.
3 Ibid.
no INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
has become the dominant feature of the constitutional structure
of English as distinguished from American and from Continental
forms of Local Government.
We shall find that these Incorporated Guardians of the Poor,
varied as they were in constitutional structure and in the organisa-
tion of their activities, fall into four classes, which we designate
respectively the Union of Urban Parishes, the Union of Rural
Parishes, the Vestry Executive and the Reorganised Vestry.
The Union of Urban Parishes
We take, as the type-specimen of the Unions of Urban
Parishes, not the first to be established, with regard to the
actual working of which little is known, and which does not
appear to have been influential as an example ; x but the most
1 The first statutory authority of this kind was the Corporation of the Poor
of the City of London, established by Parliament in 1647, under a president
and governors, for " the constant relief and employment of the poor and the
punishment of vagrants and other disorderly persons in the City of London."
This body set up a workhouse in which orphan children were maintained, gave
out materials to be worked on at home, and even sent some able-bodied men
to sea in fishing smacks captured from the Dutch and granted to the Corporation
for this purpose ( The Early History of English Poor Belief, by E. M. Leonard,
1900, pp. 272-273 ; and the authorities there quoted). This premier Poor Law
authority, of which the records could probably be found among the City arch-
ives, seems to deserve a monograph. Some description of its constitution and
work is given in old editions of Shaw's Parish Law. The Ordinance of Hi! 7
was confirmed in 1662 by the Act, 13 & 14 Charles II. c. 12 (made perpetual
by 12 Anne, St. 1, c. 18, in 1714), which defined the constitution of the Cor-
poration to be the Lord Mayor and Aldermen and fifty-two other citizens
chosen by the Common Council ; and which enabled like Corporations of the
Poor to be established in the City of Westminster, on the nomination of the
Lord Chancellor, and for other parishes within the Bills of Mortality on the
nomination of the County Justices (^4 Practical Treatise on the Laws, Customs,
Usages and Regulations of the City and Port of London, by Alexander Pulling,
first edition, 1842, third edition, 1854, pp. 242-243). We are not aware that
any such Corporations were formed, either in Westminster or elsewhere, ondez
this statute. It could even be said officially in 1843 that " no Corporation
was formed under this Act of Parliament until the year 1698, and no steps
were taken for hiring a workhouse in the City of London until the following
year " (Ninth Annual Report of Poor Law Commissioners, 1843, p. 94). This,
however, was plainly incorrect, as " reports of the Governors of the Corpora-
tion were published in L655 " (History of English Philanthropy, by B. Kirkman
Gray. HHif., p|>. 72-74). The Corporation of the Poor of the City of London
continued in existence, and its workhouses to be used, throughout the eighteenth
bury ; bul this did not prevent various City parishes from obtaining their
own Local Arts and, in some cases, establishing their own workhouses. Thus,
St. Botolph, Aldgate, did so in 1765, by 6 George 111. e. 64; St. Botolph,
Bishopsgate, in 171)5. by 35 George III. c. 61 ; and St. Bride's. Fleet Street,
THE CORPORATION OF THE POOR in
noteworthy and most widely imitated of them all, the Corporation
of the Poor of the City of Bristol, established by the Act, 7 and 8
William III. c. 32, in what was then the second city of the
kingdom. It had its origin, we may say, in a combination of
reason and philanthropy curiously analogous to nineteenth-
century movements. A century of experience of the Elizabethan
Poor Law had revealed serious evils in its practical administra-
tion, especially in the crowded cities. The Overseers had found
it difficult and troublesome to " set the poor to work." They
had been directed by the Act of 1601 to provide a sufficient stock
of flax, hemp, wool, thread, iron and other necessary stuff for
the poor to work on, the assumption being, apparently, that
these materials should be given out to destitute persons to be
worked up into valuable commodities in their own homes. At
any rate the Overseers were given no powers of acquiring land,
or of borrowing money to build or purchase premises ; and they
had no express authority to establish and maintain a workhouse,
even if the premises were provided. How far the directions of
the Elizabethan statute with regard to the provision of material
were ever acted upon we do not know. There is evidence of
considerable but not ubiquitous activity for the first three
decades of the seventeenth century, under the influence of the
Privy Council, the Assize Judges and the Justices of the Peace. 1
But this organised supervision from the centre came to an end.
It is plain that by the middle of the seventeenth century, after
the dislocations of the Civil War, the Overseers had fallen into
in 1799, by 39 George III. c. 4, and 7 George IV. session 1, c. 14. What happened
to the administration of the Corporation of the Poor, and what were its relations
to the City parishes, we have not ascertained. We gather that it was dissolved,
and its workhouse was sold, by authority of the Acts 5 George IV. c. 83, and
10 George IV. c. 43, in the decade preceding the passing of the Poor Law
Amendment Act, 1834. On the passing of that Act it was remarked that
none of the ninety-six parishes within the City walls possessed a workhouse
either singly or in combination. These parishes were formed into the City of
London Union in 1837, whilst the twelve others were divided between two
other new Unions, the East and West London respectively, in 1838 (Third and
Fourth Annual Reports of Poor Law Commissioners ; Pulling's Practical
Treatise, etc., 1842, pp. 248-249).
1 See the Calendars of State Papers, Domestic State Papers, and Privy
Council Registers for the first half of the seventeenth century ; the contem-
porary municipal records (such as those of the City of London, Shrewsbury,
Plymouth, Norwich, St. Albans, Windsor) ; Quarter Sessions from Elizabeth to
Anne, by A. H. Hamilton, 1889 ; The Country Justice, by Michael Dalton, 1655 ;
The Early History of English Poor Belief, by E. M. Leonard, 1900.
H2 INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
the habit of distributing what we should now term out-relief to
all whom they considered destitute. 1 The resulting rise in the
rates, 2 if not the other evils that ensued, was sufficient to attract
the attention both of philanthropists and of statesmen. No
less a person than John Locke, then newly appointed one of the
Commissioners of the Board of Trade, drew up in 1697 an elaborate
report in which he attributed " the multiplying of the poor and
the increase of the tax for their maintenance " to the relaxation
" of discipline and corruption of manners." 3 It seemed, he
said, nowadays to be taken for granted by Overseers that
" every one must have meat, drink, clothing and firing," the
result being that " so much goes out of the stock of the kingdom
whether they (the recipients) work or no." The dominant idea
of the reformers of the time was " the setting of the poor to
work " ; and this was inculcated by William III. in several
successive speeches from the throne. 4 These speeches, like
others nearer to our own time, failed to get embodied in any
general legislation. Meanwhile a merchant of Bristol, John
Cary, seriously concerned at the growing demoralisation of the
poor, had written a powerful pamphlet, and called meetings of
the inhabitants ; finally inducing the Mayor and Aldermen of
the city and other principal inhabitants to apply to Parliament
for a Local Act. The reasons for the application, as is stated
in the preamble, were that "it is found by experience that the
1 " It is rare to see any provision of a stock in any parish for the relief of
the poor " (A Discourse touching provision for the Poor, by Sir Matthew Hale ;
published in 1683 after his death, but written probably before 1660) ; see
History of the Poor Law, by R. Burn, 1764 ; History of the English Poor Law,
by Sir George Nicholls, 1854, vol. i. pp. 287-290.
2 " Thus in a pamphlet entitled Bread for the Poor, printed at Exeter in
1698, quoted by Mr. Ruggles and attributed to Mr. Dunning, it is stated that
the charge of maintaining the poor in some parishes in Devonshire had, within
sixty years, advanced from forty shillings to forty pounds a year ; in others
twice that sum, and most wheres double within twenty years, and like to double
again in a short time " (History of the English Poor Law, by Sir George Nicholls,
1854, vol. i. p. 329).
3 Report of the Board of Trade to the Lords Justices in the year 1697 respecting
the Relief and Employment of the Poor, drawn up by Mr. John Locke, one of
the original Commissioner a of that Board, 1787, p. 110; see State of the Poor,
by Sir F. M. Eden, 1797, vol. i. pp. 244-245 ; Pauperism and Poor Laws, by
Robert Pashley, 1852, pp. 235-236; History of the English Poor Law, by Sir
George Nicholls, 1854, vol. i. p. .'!.">:_'.
4 History and Proceedings of the I/mise of Commons, 1660-1741, by Richard
(handler, 1742-1744 ; State of the Poor, by Sir F. M. Eden, 1797, vol. i. p. 247;
History of the English Poor Law, by Sir George Nicholls, 1854, vol. i. p. 351.
THE BRISTOL CORPORATION 113
poor in the City of Bristol do daily multiply, and idleness and
debauchery amongst the meaner sort doth greatly increase, for
want of workhouses to set them to work, and a sufficient authority
to compel them thereto, as well to the charge of the inhabitants
and grief of the charitable and honest citizens of the said city,
as the great distress of the poor themselves for which sufficient
redress hath not yet been provided." An attempt in 1681 to
cope with the situation by getting a contractor to employ the
poor at spinning yarn at piecework wages had brought no
lasting improvement. 1 Gary's proposals, which were destined to
be copied up and down the kingdom for a whole century, were
summarised as follows :
1. That a spacious workhouse be erected at a general charge,
large enough for the poor to be employed therein ; and also for
room for such as, being unable to work, are to be relieved by
charity.
2. That the rules of the house may force all persons to work
that are able, and encourage manufacturers to furnish them with
materials to work upon.
3. That persons not able to maintain their children may put
them into this workhouse or hospital at what ages they will,
so that these children may be bred up to labour, principles of
virtue implanted in them at an early age, and laziness be dis-
couraged.
4. That the ancient shall be provided for according to their
wants.
5. That the rates of the city being united into one common
fund, the magistrates will be freed from the daily trouble which
they have about settlement of the poor, the parish officers will
be eased, the poor's stock will not be spent in law, but they will
be provided for without being sent from parish to parish, and
their children will be settled in a way serviceable to the public
good, and not be bred up in all manner of vice as they now are.
6. That the governor be empowered to force all poor people
to work who do not betake themselves to some lawful employ-
ment elsewhere, but spend their time lazily and idly.
7. That the governor have power to settle out the young
people at such ages as may be thought fit, the boys to navigation
1 Some Proposals for the Employment of the Poor, by Thomas Firmin, 1681 ;
The State of the Poor, by Sir F. M. Eden, 1697, vol. ii. p. 184.
I
s a
114 INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
and the maids in service ; and to bind them apprentices for a
certain number of years ; that this will prevent children from
being starved by the poverty of their parents and the neglect
of parish officers, which is now a great loss to the nation, in-
asmuch as every person would by his labour add to the wealth
of the public.
Parliament passed the Bill on the 18th January 1696, and
allowed the City of Bristol to try its experiment. The Act took
the whole management and relief of the poor out of the hands
of the Overseers of the nineteen crowded city parishes, and
established a new "Corporation of the Poor" for the whole
city, consisting of the Mayor and Aldermen of the city and the
Churchwardens of the parishes, together with four persons elected
by a public meeting of the inhabitants of each ward. 1 The
Corporation of the Poor of the City of Bristol was — if we leave
aside the immemorial traditional usages of the Corporations of
London, Norwich, and a few other ancient municipal bodies 2 —
1 The principal source for the history of this celebrated " Corporation of
the Poor of the City of Bristol " must always be its own well-kept and volum-
inous MS. Minutes, which we have found of great use ; see also the Acts,
7 & 8 William III. c. 32 ; 12 Anne, st*. *2, c. 15 ; 4 George I. c. 3 ; 18 George II.
c. 30 ; 31 George II. c. 56 ; 3 George IV. c. 24 ; 1 William IV. c. 4 ; An Account
of the Proceedings of the Corporation of the Poor of Bristol, by John Cary, 1700 ;
The State of the Poor, by\Sir F. M. Eden, 1797, vol. ii. pp. 182-203, vol. i.
pp. 275-278 ; Transactions of the Corporation of the Poor in the City of Bristol
during a period of 126 years, by James Johnson (Bristol, 1826) ; An Address
to the Inhabitants of Bristol on the subject of the. Poor Bates, by James Johnson
(Bristol, 1820) ; Observations on the Bill about to be introduced into Parliament
by the Corporation of the City and the Poor, by Thomas Stocking (Bristol, 1822) ;
Letters, essays, etc., illustrative of the Municipal History of Bristol, and of the
trade of its port, written and collected by a burgess (Bristol, 1836) ; Appendix A
to First Report of Poor Law Inquiry Commissioners, ltf.'U (Chapman's Report),
p. 510 ; Ninth Annual Report of Poor Law Commissioners, 1843, pp. 138-181.
2 The Manor and the Borough, by S. and B. Webb, 1907. It will be re-
membered that the Corporation of the Poor of the City of London was to
consist of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen ex officio, with 52 other citizens
nominated by the Common Council. The elective element was thus indirectly
chosen. Of the Bristol body, we may say that its manuscript minutes show
it to have been, from the outset, a dignified and well-organised body, presided
over by a " governor " who habitually continued in office for a term of years ;
acting under well-framed standing orders : working through a permanent
executive of fifteen members, who were divided into four or five atanding
committees ; and served by a relatively large staff of salaried officials, including
latterly even an "investigator" to detect impostors. "The services of the
Guardians," writes the able governor in 1820, " are gratuitous. No member
of the Corporation of the Poor can even supply the Hospital with ,L r Is : nor
does the whole body of Guardians put the City to any, the most trifling
expense; for when upon Committee,-, etc., any refreshment is wanted, it is
sent for to a neighbouring inn and paid by the respective individuals " (Address
UNIONS OF URBAN PARISHES 115
the first local governing body directed by Parliamentary statute
to be based mainly upon popular election in all the wards of a
great city.
The Bristol Workhouse quickly became widely known as a
promising experiment ; and within the next fifteen years thirteen
towns— Crediton (1698), Tiverton (1698), Exeter (1698), Hereford
(1698), Colchester (1698), Hull (1698), Shaftesbury (1698), King's
Lynn (1700), Sudbury (1700), Gloucester (1702), Worcester (1704),
Plymouth (1708), and Norwich (1712) — successfully applied to
Parliament for Local Acts which superseded the authority of
the Overseers and incorporated a body of " Guardians of the
Poor," to act for the whole city. The idea underlying all these
Acts was the desirability of organising the labour of the un-
employed, with the double object of maintaining them without
disorder and of increasing the national wealth. It was im-
possible to do this without providing a large and costly workhouse,
for which no powers were given by the general law, and which
could hardly be established separately in each of the small and
densely crowded parishes of an old walled town. Incidentally
the union of these parishes brought the great advantage of avoid-
ing much of the complication of the law as to settlement, and of
equalising the poor rate throughout the city.
The sanguine projects of so organising the labour of the poor
as to produce at least the cost of their maintenance were soon
proved to be delusive. At Bristol, for instance, the plan of
employing the poor at wages in the workhouse was quickly
discovered to involve not less, but greater expense per head than
their maintenance by doles of outdoor relief. 1 But the new work-
houses were incidentally found of use in providing an alternative
to the indiscriminate distribution of money by the Overseers.
to the Inhabitants of Bristol on the subject of tfie Poor Rates, by James Johnson,
1820, p. 7). St. Peter's Hospital, as the Bristol Workhouse was styled, was
incidentally referred to in 1835 by an Assistant Poor Law Commissioner as
" one of the most cleanly and well regulated establishments in England "
(Mr. Mott's Report in First Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners,
1835, p. 177). There was even a "whole-time" medical officer (Ninth Annual
Report of Poor Law Commissioners, 1843, p. 161).
1 When it was abandoned, the plan of farming out the poor to a contractor
was reverted to. " A malt and corn dealer . . . was to bear all the costs and
take all the profits of the sack-making business carried on by the city poor.
He was to give each worker a small gratuity as he thought fit. . . . Thus the
scheme initiated by Gary in the hope of raising wages was used to depress
them " {History of English Philanthropy, by B. Kirkman Gray, 1905, p. 212).
n6 INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
These early reformers had, in fact, accidentally stumbled on the
discovery of the " workhouse test." It became possible to offer
maintenance to the able-bodied applicant in a form that he did
not like, with the result that the demand for relief immediately
fell off, to the great saving of the ratepayers. And so in 1723,
Sir Edward Knatchbull induced the House of Commons to
pass a general Act enabling the officers of separate parishes to
hire premises and maintain them as workhouses for the poor.
Within a decade over a hundred workhouses were set up by
parishes under this Act. The demand for Local Acts establish-
ing new bodies of Incorporated Guardians of the Poor was for a
time checked. But the general Act of 1723 merely enabled the
Churchwardens and Overseers of particular parishes to hire or
purchase premises for a workhouse ; and gave no power to
parishes to combine for the purpose. Accordingly, we find pre-
sently beginning again the demand for Local Acts incorporating
a body of Guardians for a union of parishes. Such new statutory
authorities were established at Canterbury (1727), Bury St.
Edmunds (1748), Chichester (1753), Chester (1762), Salisbury
(1770), Oxford (1771), 1 Southampton (1773), and Maidstone
(1780).
We make no attempt to describe the results of the experi-
ments in " setting the poor to work " by the Incorporated
Guardians of Bristol and the score of towns which followed its
example in the first eighty years of the eighteenth century. 2
Some of them quickly abandoned the experiment. Others dis-
continued it and resumed it at a later date, when the memory
of the earlier failure had been lost. It will be more convenient
1 As to the Incorporated Guardians of Oxford, see Oxford in the Eighteenth
Century, by J. R. Green and G. Roberson (vol. xli. of Oxford Historical Society
Publications, 1901, p. 318). Coventry (1801) and Lincoln (1812) were belated
imitators, probably influenced by the Shrewsbury House of Industry, if not
also by the Suffolk and Norfolk Hundreds about to be described.
2 Besides those of the Corporation of the Poor of the City of Bristol, \vc
have been able to consult the MS. Minutes of the corresponding bodies at
Norwich, Plymouth and Gloucester; which are, however (unlike Bristol and
Shrewsbury), not illuminated by any considerable pamphlet literature, or the
records of contemporary controversy. See, however, Report of the 8%
Provisional Committee appointed by (he Court of Guardians in the City of Norwich,
with an account of the savings which lain In in produced by the late regulations in
the diet of the Workhouse, etc., by Edward Rigby (Norwich, 1788). Later
information is supplied by Sir F. ML Eden in his State of the Poor, 1797; and
in the Ninth and Tenth Annual Reports of the Poor Law Commissioners, 1843
and 1844.
THE SHREWSBURY EXPERIMENT 117
to see what happened in the subsequent case of Shrewsbury,
which was widely and persistently advertised throughout the
kingdom. 1 In 1783, some of the principal inhabitants of what
was still the Metropolis of the Welsh Border, tired of the mal-
administration of the Overseers and Vestries of the six little
parishes crowded within the walls and liberties of that ancient
city, obtained a Local Act for the incorporation of a body of
Guardians of the Poor, with power to borrow £10,000 for the
erection of a House of Industry. The Guardians consisted of
all owners of freehold or copyhold property within the city
worth £30 a year, and all inhabitant occupiers rated at £15 a
year. This body itself appointed the Clerk, Treasurer, Governor,
Steward, Matron and Chaplain, but also elected twelve Directors
of the Poor in whom the whole administration was vested. They
were fortunate in rinding ready to hand premises admirably
suited for their objects, on a magnificent site at a high cliff in
a bend of the Severn, adjacent to the city. This building had
been erected in 1759-1765 at a cost of £14,000 by the Foundling
Hospital of London for the accommodation of children drafted
from its principal establishment, but had been disused in 1774
on such provincial homes being discontinued. The Shrewsbury
1 The Shrewsbury House of Industry was greatly " boomed " about 1791—
1800 by its enthusiastic promoter, Isaac Wood. We have not seen the MS.
Minutes, which possibly still exist ; but abundant information is afforded by
the Acts 24 George III. c. 15 (1784), and 7 George IV. c. 141 (1826) ; Directions
for the Conduct of the Overseers of the Poor for the Six United Parishes in the
Town and Liberties of Shrewsbury, 1800 ; Some Account of the Shrewsbury House
of Industry, by Isaac Wood, 1791, which ran through five editions ; An Intro-
duction to the Fifth Edition of Some Account, etc., by the same, 1800 ; Observa-
tions on the Accounts of the Shrewsbury House of Industry, by the same, 1799 ;
Letter to Sir William Pulteney, Bart., by the same, 1797 ; General Observations
on the Year's Account of the Shrewsbury House of Industry, by the same, 1800 ;
An Address to the Parochial Committees at Bath . . . for the establishment of a
House of Industry, by J. (really Isaac) Wood, 1798 ; An Address to the Poor
. . . within the Town of Shrewsbury . . . delivered at the House of Industry, by
Rev. Thomas Stedman, 1786 ; Appendix to some Account of the Shrewsbury
House of Industry, containing a correspondence with the Rev. J. Howlett, 1791 ;
The State of the Poor, by Sir F. M. Eden, 1797, vol. ii. pp. 622-643 ; Annals of
Agriculture, vol. xxxv., 1800, pp. 157-163, 608-621 ; General View of the Agri-
culture of Shropshire, by Joseph Plymley, 1803, p. 131 ; Some Account of . . .
Shrewsbury, by Hugh Owen, 1808, pp. 333-346 ; General View of the Agriculture
of North Wales, by Walter Davies, 1813, p. 434 ; Aris's Birmingham Gazette,
15th November 1824 ; Report of the Committee appointed to collect information
and documents as to the inexpediency of repealing the . . . Shrewsbury Incor-
porated House of Industry Act, 1824 ; First Report of Poor Law Inquiry
Commissioners, 1834, Appendix A, Lewis's Report, p. 659 ; Ninth Annual
Report of Poor Law Commissioners, 1843.
n8 INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
Guardians purchased this building (which had been used by the
Government during the American war for the confinement of
prisoners of war) for £5500, and rapidly equipped it for its new
purpose. The House of Industry which they established, with
its farm, its corn-mill and its woollen manufactory, had the good
fortune to enlist the devotion of Isaac Wood, an indefatigable
local citizen, who evidently lavished upon its administration an
incessant personal attention. His enthusiastic descriptions of its
success were widely circulated, and did much to revive the faith
in the profitable employment of the poor. 1
The object of the Shrewsbury Directors was, primarily and
avowedly, " to furnish employment for the poor and compel them
to earn their own support," which had " been found impracticable
in parish workhouses, under the direction and management of
those officers who are annually chosen and annually removed.
. . . Nor could the still more important object of training up the
children of the poor to habits of industry and virtue be here
obtained. In these workhouses, as well as in their private
dwellings, they are incorporated with the abandoned and de-
praved." 2 For ten years the experiment had no small measure
of success. The erection of a well-planned institution, ad-
ministered by a standing committee and salaried officers, evi-
dently brought about a great improvement in the condition of
the paupers, whilst diminishing the Poor Rates by one-third. 3
1 The example of Shrewsbury was in 1791-1792 followed by five neighbouring
districts of rural character, viz. Oswestry district (31 George III. c. 24, 1791) ;
Ellesmere and other parishes (31 George III. c. 78, 1791) ; Whitchurch (32
George III. c. 85, 1792) ; Atcham and other parishes (32 George III. c. 95,
1792) ; Montgomery and Pool district of Montgomeryshire and Shropshire
(32 George III. c. 96, 1792, 36 George III. c. 38, 1796, and 6 George IV. c. 123,
1825 ; House of Industry at Forden). As to these Shropshire experiments in
rural districts, which in various respects resemble those of the Suffolk and
Norfolk Hundreds to be described subsequently, and which deserve a local
monograph, see the references given as to the Shrewsbury House of Industry.
Two parishes at Bath also started a House of Industry ; see the printed broad-
sheet of Rules, Orders and Regulations for . . . the House of Industry as agreed
upon by the . . . Vestries of the Paris/ies of St. Peter and Paul and St. James,
1800. An attempt was made at Sheffield in 1791 to establish a House of
Industry on the Shrewsbury model ; see The Substance of Mr. Ward's Speech
nt t/ic Town Hall in Sheffield . . . at a meeting . . . to girc assent or dissent t<>
the Bill fur tht proposed new workhouse (Sheffield, 1791) ; Municipal Origins, by
F. H. Spencer, 1911, pp. 39-40.
2 Some Account of the Shrewsbury House of Industry, by Isaac Wood, 1791,
p. 4.
3 Ibid. p. 13. The out-relief, including " nurses' pay," went down from
£834 in 1784-1785 to £322 in 1789-1790 ; whilst the sums recovered from fathers
I
THE HOUSE OF INDUSTRY rig
Between two and three hundred men, women and children were
brought into the House of Industry. Systematic arrangements
were made for bathing and medically examining them on ad-
mission ; and for the treatment in a separate infirmary of such
of them as were sick. 1 Most of them were set to work at preparing,
spinning and weaving wool, whilst " at the same time working
rooms or shops were set apart for the shoemakers, tailors, car-
penters, etc., where those paupers who had been brought up to
these occupations were immediately employed, the most in-
telligent and trusty being appointed to cut out the work and
superintend the rest." 2 But the Shrewsbury Directors never
contemplated refusing all outdoor relief. What they believed, as
Wood later expressed it, was that " Indiscriminate allowances
and indiscriminate confinement to a Poor House are equally
absurd and injurious. . . . We discriminate. This is the grand
hinge upon which every plan of parochial reform ought to turn." 3
" To compel all claimants to come into the House," he explained,
" never made any part of their plan, and is an idea that has never
been acted upon in any period of their practice. In cases of real
distress the poor are more liberally relieved at their own dwellings
than they ever were before this establishment took place. Never-
theless, by the proper examination of each respective case before
a weekly board of respectable Directors, and the regular modes of
enquiry instituted by the byelaws of the House, such a check has
been given to fraud and imposition that the amount of the Poor
Kate is one third less than when the House was opened in 1784. . . .
Such a result could never have been obtained without employ-
ment had been provided for the poor in the House of Industry. . . .
At the same time our experience has demonstrated, and it is a fact
of the utmost moment, that it is not necessary to furnish the
employment for the great body of the poor at large ; it is sufficient
that you have it to offer to such applicants as allege the want of
of illegitimate children or from other parishes rose from £142 in 1784-1785 to
£286 in 1789-1790 (Appendix to Some Account of the Shrewsbury House of Industry,
containing a correspondence with the Rev. J. Howlett, 1791, p. 106). Yet where
occasional relief was needed it was liberally given (Letter to Sir William, Pul-
teney, Bart., by Isaac Wood, 1797, p. 39).
1 Some Account of the Shrewsbury House of Industry, by I. Wood, 1791,
p. 39.
2 Ibid. p. 21.
3 An Introduction to the Fifth Edition of Some Account of the Shrewsbury
House of Industry, by Isaac Wood, 1800, p. xsxix.
i2o INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
work in justification of their demands upon the parochial fund. . . .
Out of 7000 poor we have never had occasion, at one and the same
time, to furnish employment for half seven hundred." 1 At first
all was done according to rule. Every case was strictly enquired
into. The payment of rent was peremptorily stopped. Those
who pleaded sickness were visited and examined by the doctor.
Gifts of clothing were discontinued. All constant doles were
stopped, relief being only given to tide over temporary emer-
gencies. And where destitution was plainly caused by a large
family of young children, the Directors preferred to take some of
the children into the House of Industry, rather than relieve the
family by a dole. 2 Such a system, it is clear, depended for any
success on a strict and continuous policy. After Wood's death —
which took place in 1801 from fever caught whilst inspecting the
House — the results were less successful. Within a few years we
note a complete revulsion of feeling in Shrewsbury itself. 3 The
once belauded House of Industry is seen to be a centre of
demoralisation rather than of reform. 4 In 1824-1826 we have
a successful agitation for the dissolution of the Incorporation,
and a reversion to parish management. " It is curious to find,"
1 Isaac Wood, in Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxxv., 1800, p. 158 ; he had
expressed the same view in 1791 (Some Account of the Shrewsbury House of
Industry, by Isaac Wood, 1791, pp. 5-7).
2 Ibid. pp. 14-19.
3 In 1803 the Shrewsbury institution could still be referred to as " un-
rivalled " (General View of the Agriculture of Shropshire, by Joseph Plymley,
1803, p. 131). But by 1808 we learn that public opinion in the town had
" experienced a great revolution " ; and the system inaugurated by Wood has
been given up (Some Account of . . . Shrewsbury, Anon., 1808, p. 553).
4 Within a very few j'ears Sir P. M. Eden could report of the Ellesmere
House of Industry that "notwithstanding the promised advantages of this
institution, it is said that the incorporated parishes are, in general, heartily
sorry that they ever engaged in the erection " (Slate of the Poor, by Sir F. M.
Eden, 1797, vol. ii. pp. G19-620). Here is a description of the Houses of Industry
at Oswestry and Ellesmere in 1834. Their industries, it was remarked, are
" worked by the able-bodied inmates in such a feeble and languid manner that
the occupation is anything but calculated to preserve, much less generate, habits
of industry. . . . With the exception that their dormitories are separate, men,
women and children associate as they please. . . . Women of notoriously bad
characters are admitted and permitted to communicate freely with the other
female inmates. . . . Children of both sexes, from the sad examples of con-
versation they daily see and hear, are exposed to the pollution of vice at the
very dawn of life. . . . Such an indiscriminate mixture of persons of all ages,
sexes and characters, it is almost needless to remark, is a system ill calculated
to promote the comfort or improvement of paupers who are aggregated together
in Houses of Industry " (First Report of Poor Law Inquiry Commissioners,
1834, Appendix A, Lewis's Report, p. G60).
THE UNION OF RURAL PARISHES 121
reports the Assistant Poor Law Commissioner of 1842, " that the
Act . . . which was anxiously watched over in its infancy, and
matured into vigour under the eye of its enthusiastic parent,
was doomed to live through not half a century ; and that almost
before the generation in which it had sprung up had passed
away we find it avowed [by the Shrewsbury Committee of 1824]
that the objects stated in the preamble had never been attained,
and that the mere recital of them in the present day was sufficient
to expose their absurdity." x
The Union of Rural Parishes
The desirability of combining for the administration of poor
relief was even more obvious in the case of thinly inhabited rural
parishes, each containing an average of only a few dozen or a few
score families, than in that of crowded urban communities. The
results of the general Act of 1723, which authorised the establish-
ment of workhouses by one or more parishes, had, after the first
flush of apparent success, not been such as to lead to its adoption
in rural districts, where the defects of management imder parish
officers, or the horrors of the farming system, soon outweighed
the advantages of the workhouse itself. In the country parishes,
at any rate, something more efficient than parochial management
was required. Yet not for more than sixty years was the
example of Bristol followed in any rural area.
John Cary had pointed out that the only way to get work-
houses in the country districts was to incorporate a larger area
than the parish. The difficulty was to decide upon this larger
area, and upon the constitution of the governing body. Cary's
suggestion was that all the Justices of the Peace and all the free-
holders of each County should be constituted the Poor Law
authority for the entire County. 2 John Locke had proposed the
1 Ninth Annual Report of Poor Law Commissioners, 1843, p. 281. The
magnificently placed site of the House of Industry, affording one of the finest
views in Europe, together with the substantial building overlooking the Severn,
eventually became the property of Shrewsbury School, which was transferred
to the premises of the old workhouse, suitably converted for its new uses, in 1882.
2 Essay towards Regulating the Trade and Employing the Poor of this Kingdom,
by John Cary, 1700 ; The State of the Poor, by Sir F. M. Eden, 1797, vol. i.
pp. 253-257. Ruggles, himself a Suffolk Magistrate, thought that Cary's plan
" may probably have given the hint to those gentlemen who applied to Parlia-
ment . . . for the Act for . . . Colneis and Carlford " {History of the Poor,
by Thomas Ruggles, 1794, vol. i. p. 177).
122 INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
establishment of workhouses in the several Hundreds of each
County. 1 Both these suggestions were, between 1750 and 1755,
more than once embodied in general Bills, which failed to become
law. 2 The Bill for the establishment of " general County work-
houses " struck the average country gentleman as " a huge un-
wieldy scheme, attended with such an amazing certain expense,
and liable to so many reasonable objections that the Parliament
rejected it. Then it was proposed to have County workhouses to
take in children only. But this, though it considerably reduced
the other proposal, was subject to very many of the same objections
which attended that, and therefore this likewise was rejected." 3
William Hay's project for a workhouse in each Hundred seemed
more feasible, but the Hundred varied enormously in size and
character in different Counties, and no member succeeded in pro-
ducing a scheme that commended itself to the County repre-
sentatives generally. 4 At last, in 1756, the energy and per-
sistence of the gentlemen of two small Hundreds in the South of
Suffolk, headed by Admiral Vernon, the victor of Portobello,
resulted in the passing of a Local Act, which set up, for these two
Hundreds of Carlford and Colneis, a new local governing body,
empowered to erect a workhouse, and practically to take over,
from the officers of the 28 parishes concerned, the whole adminis-
tration of the Poor Law. 5
1 Report of the Board of Trade to the Lords Justices in the year 1697 respecting
the Relief and Employment of the Poor (reprinted, 1787).
2 The chief advocate in the House of Commons was the zealous William
Hay, M.P., who, as early as 1735, actually got passed a series of resolutions for
the division of each County into suitable areas, each to have a workhouse,
under twelve Guardians. On the revival of interest, Hay published Ins plan
as Remarks on the Laws relating to the poor, with Proposals for their better Relief
and Employment, 1751. This was commented on in Observations on the Defects
of the Poor Laws, by Rev. T. Alcock, 1752. Alcock agreed that there should
be a single workhouse for tho whole Hundred, but thought that the Overseers
and clergyman of each parish should manage it for a year, in rotation ! There
were also pamphlets by tho Earl of Hillsborough (1753), Henry Fielding (1753)
and William Bailey (1758), as well as a Select Committee of tho House of
Commons in 1759, all advocating workhouses for extensive combinations of
parishes (sec Sir Francis Eden's State of the Poor, 1794, vol. i.).
3 Rev. R. Canning, in The Christian's Magazine, vol. iii., 1763, p. 28.
* It is characteristic of Sir George Nicholls that, deriving his information
almost exclusively from the collection of Public General Statutes, he Bhould
declare that " nothing further was done " (History of the English Poor Law, by
Sir George Nicholls, 1854, vol. ii. p. 55) ; entirely omitting the episode now bo
be described ; and, indeed, scarcely mentioning any of the constitutional
experiments described in this chapter.
6 29 George II. c. 79 (175G). In the promotion of this Act, Admiral Vernon
COLNEIS AND CARLFORD 123
The objects of the promoters of this Act are well set out in
a nearly contemporaneous document. " We propose to incor-
porate," says this writer, in order " to administer proper comfort
and assistance to the sick, infirm and aged, introduce sobriety
and virtue among them, and in an especial manner, to render
their children useful to society by acquainting them with their
duty towards God and man, whence many are saved from un-
timely end, and all of them enabled to acquire an honest liveli-
hood, and so not remain any longer a burden and reproach to
our county. We incorporate too, to ease the respective parishes
in their rates, a grievance very loudly and very commonly com-
plained of by all sorts of occupiers ; and also to feed and clothe the
objects of their care with that plenty and decency that their wants
and situation can reasonably require. . . . Our design, too, is to
invite gentlemen to attend to the state and conduct of the poor —
a concern which, however weighty and important in itself, it must
be confessed, is not, nor is it likely it ever will be, regarded by
them in the separate parishes, seeing that but very few owners of
any fashion live where their estates are situated, and whenever it
happens that they do reside there, the indelicacy and rudeness of
parish meetings oblige them never to come into such assemblies." '
With such high hopes we see some fifty of the squires and clergy
of these South Suffolk parishes meeting, in June 1756, at an
Ipswich tavern. One of them, the Rev. R. Canning, advances
twenty pounds towards the initial expenses. 2 Admiral Vernon,
whom they make chairman, gives a site on Nacton Heath on
which to build the workhouse, and lends £1000 at 3| per cent
towards its erection. 3 For a couple of years we watch the little
group of reformers planning their new institution, carefully
and the Rev. R. Canning had the assistance of Sir Richard Lloyd, a leading
lawyer of the time (Observations on the Poor Laws, by R. Potter, 1775, p. 33) ;
and himself interested in Poor Law reform.
1 A Letter to J. W., Esquire, relating to Mr. G y's Pamphlet upon the Poor
Laws, with some reflections in favour of the House of Industry at Nacton, in the
County of Suffolk, and on the Utility of such designs, 1756, 24 pp. No copy of
this is known to us, but voluminous extracts from it are given in a letter signed
XX in the Ipswich Journal, 23rd July and 10th September 1825. The in-
scription on the House of Industry at Melton was as follows : " Erected in the
year 1768 for the Instruction of Youth, the Encouragement of Industry, the
Relief of Want, the Support of Age and the comfort of Infirmity and Pain "
(MS. Minutes, Incorporated Guardians, Loes and Wilford, 1768).
2 Ibid. Colneis and Carlford, 25th June 1756.
3 Ibid. 28th June and 29th December 1756.
124 INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
ordering the various items of furniture and equipment, and de-
ciding all the details of its organisation. 1 By March 1758, the
" Nacton House of Industry " is completed according to the best
science of the time ; and we see transferred to it 2 the paupers,
male and female, young and old, well and sick, who had pre-
viously been lodging in the dilapidated village poor-houses, or
eking out by begging and pilfering their weekly doles of out-relief.
In the Nacton House of Industry they were apparently well pro-
vided for and kindly treated, but set to work at weaving corn-
sacks out of hemp, 3 making cordage of various sorts, especially
ploughlines, and spinning wool for the weavers of Norwich. 4
" This institution," it was said, " puts an end to the usual custom
of pecuniary payments to the poor, which are generally abused
by them, and, as generally, given without discretion. . . .
Many children are rendered useful who otherwise would have
figured nowhere but in a landscape of Gainsborough's, the spawn
of gipsies, lying upon a sunny bank half naked, with their bundles
of stolen wood by their sides — a daily task which those who pre-
tend to have the care of them never fail to exact." 5 " By means
of the Act," wrote one enthusiast in 1764, " the poor in these
Hundreds are much better maintained, are happier in themselves,
and more useful to the public than in any other part of the
kingdom ; and by the account which has been published, it
appears that this scheme will considerably lessen the present
expense, for, from Easter 1758 to Michaelmas 1762, notwith-
standing some very extraordinary expenses attending the first
institution of it in these Hundreds, a saving has been already
made of above £2000 ; and in a few years the debt contracted
for its first institution will be cleared, and the rates will not be
above half of what they are at present." 6 So successful did the
1 MS. Minutes, Incorporated Guardians, Colneis and Carlford, 1757-1758.
- Ibid. 20th and 23rd March 1758.
3 Ibid. 26th June 1758.
1 History of the Poor, by Thomas Ruggles, 1794. Other industrial occupa-
tions carried on in these Houses of Industry (besides the cultivation of th.-ir
few acres) were the making of linen clothes, shoes and stockings for their own
use ; spinning worsted yarn ; making fishing nets ; handknitting, and the
weaving of coarse woollen cloth.
6 A Letter to J. W., Esquire, relating to G y's Pamphlet upon the Poor
Laws, with some reflections in favour of the House of Industry at Nacton, by _\ \.
] Ttiti ; see Ipswich Journal, 10th September 1S25.
8 Definitions and Axioms relating to Cliarity, Charitable Institutions and the
Poor Laws, by Samuel Cooper, 1704.
SUFFOLK HOUSES OF INDUSTRY 125
experiment appear, both in the reduction of the Poor Rate and
the better maintenance of the poor, that in 1763-1764 no fewer
than seven other Hundreds or pairs of Hundreds, of Suffolk and
Norfolk, obtained Local Acts of a similar land, 1 to be followed, a
few years later, by half-a-dozen more ; 2 so that, by 1785, over
the greater part of the area of these two large Counties the ad-
ministration of the Poor Law had been withdrawn from the parish
officers and vested in fourteen new bodies of Incorporated
Guardians of the Poor. 3
1 These were the Hundreds of Blything (4 George III. c. 56 ; House of In-
dustry at Bulcamp) ; Bosmere and Clayton (4 George III. c. 57 ; House of
Industry at Barham) ; Lodden and Clavering (4 George III. c. 90 ; House of
Industry at Heckingham) ; Loes and Wilford (5 George III. c. 97 ; House of
Industry at Melton) ; Mutford and Lothingland (5 George III. c. 89 ; House
of Industry at Oulton) ; Samford (4 George III. c. 59 ; House of Industry at
Tattingstone) ; and Wangford (4 George III. c. 91 ; House of Industry at
Shipmeadow).
The statistical returns presented to the House of Commons in 1776 include
8 of these " Hundred Houses," which had each cost from £4000 to £12,000 to
build, and contained each from 150 to 350 inmates, who were employed in
spinning, weaving, and knitting hemp and wool into sacking, twine, cloth and
stockings ; making fishing nets, and farming the land. Some of the labour
was let out to farmers. Most of the Houses kept a tailor, a shoemaker and a
" mantuamaker " at wages (Second Report of House of Commons Committee,
21st May 1776).
2 East and West Flegg (15 George III. c. 13) ; Mitford and Launditch
(15 George III. c. 59; House of Industry at Gressinghall) ; Forehoe (16
George III. c. 9; House of Industry at Forehoe) ; Cosford and Polsted (19
George III. c. 30 ; House of Industry at Semer) ; Hartismere, Hoxne and
Thredling (19 George III. c. 30) ; Stow (18 George III. c. 35 ; House of Industry
at One-House) ; and Tunstead and Happing (25 George III. c. 27 ; House of
Industry at Smallburgh). There was a belated incorporation of nine Nor-
folk parishes (Buxton, Everingham, etc.) in 1806, by 46 George III. c. 44 ;
and another in 1816, when by 56 George III. c. 66, a number of parishes
(Shardlow, Milne, etc.) in Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire were
similarly combined. Neither of these we have explored. More directly
imitative may have been the five Unions of Shropshire parishes, arising in
1791-1792 from the early success of the Shrewsbury House of Industry, which
we have already described.
3 These Suffolk and Norfolk Incorporated Guardians were frequently made
the subject of particular references and brief descriptions, though we have
found nothing in the nature of a monograph on the subject. We have had
access to the MS. Minutes of those of Colneis and Carlford, Loes and Wilford,
and Samford. Besides the minutes, the chief sources of information are the
various Acts ; the House of Commons Returns as to Poor Laws, 1776 ; the
numerous sets of " Rules and Orders " and other printed documents, and the
reports of sundry local committees of investigation hereafter cited. Various
printed documents of these Incorporations are accidentally preserved in the
British Museum, volumes 10351 i. 10 and 10351 i. 24. Much may be gathered from
the files of the Ipswich Journal, especially between 1815 and 1830. The chief
description of the Houses of Industry at different dates are those in The
Farmer's Tour Through the East of England, by Arthur Young, 1771, vol. ii.
126 INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
These "Incorporations" of Guardians of the Poor were, with
insignificant variation, all constituted upon a practically identical
plan. All the Justices of the Peace resident within the district, or
sometimes within five miles of it ; all the owners of freeholds
worth £30 or £60 a year and upwards ; all the Rectors or Vicars
of the respective parishes ; sometimes all their curates also ; and
all the leaseholders of lands or tenements worth £60, or £100, or
£120 a year and upwards, were constituted " Guardians of the
Poor." x This indeterminate and unwieldy body, which was
directed to meet quarterly, became the ultimate governing
authority. At its first meeting it was required to appoint twenty-
four from among its own number to be " Directors of the Poor,"
serving for life, and also to elect a President of the Incorporation.
There had also to be chosen, out of the Guardians, sometimes by
the whole meeting, sometimes by the Directors only, twenty-four
or thirty-six " Acting Guardians," one-half or one-third of whom
retired annually. It was in the hands of these two bodies of
Directors and Acting Guardians that the whole executive
authority, and practically the entire government, of the Incor-
pp. 178-190 ; Observations on the Poor Laws, by R. Potter, 1775, pp. 33-49 ;
A dialogue in two conversations . . . in answer to Observations on the Poor
Laws, by Thomas Mendham, 1775 ; Tfioughts on the Construction and Polity
of Prisons, by Rev. John Jebb, 1786, pp. 11 ; History of the Poor, by Thomas
Ruggles, 1794, vol. ii. (this account was reproduced as appendix to General
View of the Agriculture of Suffolk, by Arthur Young, 1794) ; Charitable Institu-
tions and the Poor Laws, 1763; a pamphlet entitled Definitions and Axioms
relative to Charity, Charitable Institutions and the Poor Laws, 1764, by Samuel
Cooper, of which we have found no copy, but which is described by Sir Francis
Eden and quoted in the Ninth Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners,
1843 ; The Insufficiency of the Causes to which the increase of our Poor and of the
Poor's Rates have been commonly ascribed, the True One stated, with an Inquiry
into the Mortality of Country Houses of Industry, etc., by Rev. J. Howlett, 1788 ;
The State of the Poor, by Sir F. M. Eden, 1797, vol. ii. ; History of the Poor, by
Thomas Ruggles, 1794 ; General View of tlie Agriculture of Norfolk, by Arthur
Young, 1804; Letters on the Kind an<l Economic Management of the Poor,
chiefly as regards I nenrporated Poor Houses, by Edward Moon, 18:25. See also
the Report of the Poor Law Inquiry Commissioners, 1834, Appendix A, Stuart's
Report, p. 355, and pp. 187-1!)S, 203-294 ; and the First and Second Annual
Reports of the l'oor Law Commissioners, 1835 ami 1836, tin- Latter containing
a valuable " Report on the administration of the Poor Law Amendment Act
in Suffolk and Norfolk, " by .lames Phillips Kay; the Nintli Annual Report,
1843; together with The Christian'* Magazine, L762 1763, vol. ii. pp. 624, .".78,
vol. iii. p. 24 ; and The Annals of Agriculture, especially about 1800.
1 Women freeholders or leaseholders were not excluded, but they were
required to vote by proxy. At the first meeting five Guardians "delivered
proxies from the women undermentioned" (MS. Minutes. Incorporated
Guardians, Colncis and Carlfonl, 25th June L756).
INCORPORATION ADMINISTRATION 127
poration was legally placed. The exact relation between these
two executive bodies, and the precise distribution of duties
between them, varied slightly in the different Local Acts. The
general principle seems to have been that the Directors were to
appoint the Treasurer, the Clerk and other chief officers, and to
decide from time to time such large issues of financial policy as
borrowing money, acquiring land, and erecting workhouses ;
whilst the Acting Guardians were to undertake the routine duties
of workhouse management. But in many of the Acts it is the
Directors and Acting Guardians together who are authorised to
perform most of the duties that are recited, and we do not find it
easy to make out the line of demarcation. Between them they
were always authorised to borrow a substantial capital sum, to
erect and maintain a workhouse ; to receive in it such poor
persons as the parishes chose to send to them ; to set the inmates
to work ; to make byelaws for their government, and to punish
the refractory ; to bind children apprentices to any person legally
liable to take them within the district ; apparently to relieve the
destitute in any other way they thought fit ; 1 and to levy the
cost upon all the parishes within the district, in proportion to the
average Poor Kates paid by each during the seven years preceding
the Act, which were not to be exceeded.
The relation in which these Incorporations stood to the
authorities of the County and the Parish was one of some intricacy
and obscurity. The Local Acts, under which they were estab-
lished, did not professedly relieve the Justices of the Peace from
their responsibility for the supervision of the Poor Law adminis-
tration ; and did not in any way exempt the new Directors and
Guardians of the Poor from magisterial control. They were
even expressly required to submit their accounts for allowance
at each Quarter Sessions, when an opportunity was afforded for
any person to make objection to their proceedings, and for the
1 They were even given powers of compulsorily placing within the House
of Industry persons who were not paupers. The Incorporated Guardians of
Colneis and Carlford petition the House of Commons in 1763, " That they con-
ceive it would very much tend to the better government of the said poor if
your petitioners were authorised to apprehend any idle, lazy or disorderly
persons found within the Hundred begging or refusing to work, and to carry
them to some Justice of the Peace ; and if such Justice was authorised to
commit such offenders to the House of Industry, there to be dealt with according
to law under the direction of the said Justice of the Peace " (MS. Minutes,
Incorporated Guardians, Colneis and Carlford, 3rd October 1763). The desired
power was given in the Local Act, 4 George III. c. 58.
128 INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
Court to give such orders as it thought fit. It is, however, easy
to see that, as with all the new Authorities established under
Local Acts, this subjection of the Suffolk and Norfolk Incorpora-
tions to the Justices was entirely illusory. Their very creation
was taken to imply, and was probably intended to imply, that
they were themselves to exercise whatever discretion had previ-
ously been exercised in Poor Law administration by the Single
or the Double Justice, or in Petty or Special Sessions. We see
this supersession of the Justices forcibly described by a fervent
admirer of the new system. " When you are incorporated,"
he declares to the parishes, " the Directors and Guardians are
judges of the measure of relief. When you are disincorporated
it will be fixed by the Justices. And do you really believe that
these gentlemen are better judges of the real wants of the poor,
than a committee of the House, composed of a mixture of gentle-
men and men of business ? Or do you suppose that smaller
allowances will be made in the Sessions Hall at Woodbridge,
than in the committee-room of the House of Industry. . . . The
pauper makes his complaint to the Overseer and the Overseer
takes it to the Committee. If the complaint is unreasonable or
experimental . . . the Committee refuses relief, and there is an
end of the business ; the pauper grumbles perhaps, but submits,
because he knows there is no remedy. Not so in an un-
incorporated parish. The pauper who is refused relief to-day
comes again to-morrow ; frequently with abusive language ;
not infrequently with threats. However often repulsed, he
returns again to the charge ; drags the Overseer to half the
Justices in the County, and at last by importunity and worrying
obtains an allowance that he ill-deserves, and which is given
rather to purchase quiet and forbearance than because it is
wanted." x
This quasi- judicial authority of the Directors and Acting
Guardians of the new Incorporations comes out in their relations
with the parish authorities. The Directors and Acting Guardians
took over from the Overseers the whole administration of Poor
Law relief ; but the Local Acts in no way relieved the parishioners
from their statutory obligation to serve as Overseers, and in no
way exempted the Overseers from any of their duties or obliga-
tions. What happened was that the parish officer acquired, in
1 Ipswich Journal, 22nd May 1825.
I
POWERS OF THE INCORPORATIONS 129
place of the Justices of the Peace, a new set of masters, from
whom he received peremptory orders. He had to attend the
meetings of the Directors and Acting Guardians whenever
required ; to produce lists of the poor in his parish, lists of
children, lists of persons liable to take apprentices, and any other
information required. 1 Whenever it was desired that outdoor
relief should be given in any case, the parish officers had to
attend the " Weekly Meeting " of the committee and support
the application. 2 The parish officers might even be required
to attend regularly at the House of Industry every week as a
matter of course, the journey probably sacrificing nearly a whole
day of their time. 3 All the outdoor relief that the Directors and
Acting Guardians allowed in particular cases was paid weekly
under their orders by the Overseers ; 4 and this had to be done,
as one order directs, " in specie personally by themselves." 5
Any failure to discharge these duties, or to obey any of the
directions of the Directors and Acting Guardians, might be
visited by the penalty of a fine, inflicted not by the Justices but
by the Directors and Acting Guardians themselves. 6 In case
any parish failed to pay its quota, the Directors and Acting
Guardians could themselves inflict a fine on the Overseer. 7 The
1 MS. Minutes, Incorporated Guardians. Colneis and Carlford, 30th March
1778. "That the Churchwardens within the several parishes do make lists
of the number of poor with their families . . . and do attend the committee
. . . with such lists in order that the committee may judge of the necessitous
poor, and give them such relief as their present necessary occasions may require "
(MS. Minutes, Incorporated Guardians, Samford, 14th July 1795).
2 Ibid. Loes and Wilford, 1st April 1811. "That no pauper shall be
relieved by a weeldy committee or quarterly meeting unless accompanied by
the Churchwarden or Overseer of the Parish where they live" (Byelaws, Rides,
Orders and Instruction for the Better Government and Support of the Poor in the
Hundred of Bosmere and Claydon in Suffolk, 1813, p. 20).
3 " Ordered that the Overseers ... do regularly attend at the Poor House
every Wednesday. ... In case of their non-attendance . . . they will be
subject to the penalty under the 44 section of the last Act " (MS. Minutes,
Incorporated Guardians, Samford, 1st October 1799).
4 " Ordered that Mary B. and her son Thomas B. of Bradfield, an idiot,
and she old and infirm, be allowed 2/6 a week to be paid by the Overseer
until further orders" {ibid. Loes and Wilford, 18th July 1768).
5 Ibid. Samford, 25th June 1833.
6 Two Overseers were summoned to appear before the Directors and
Guardians in 1768 and fined a shilling each " for neglect of duty " (ibid. Loes
and Wilford, 26th December 1768). Two more in 1778 were fined half a
guinea each (ibid. 29th June 1778).
7 In 1762 we see an Overseer, who had not paid the contribution due from
his parish, after repeated formalities, summarily sentenced by the Directors
and Acting Guardians themselves, to pay a fine of forty shillings (MS. Minutes,
K
130 INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
Suffolk and Norfolk Incorporations were thus, in effect, a com-
bination of the Justices and the parish officers, exercising many
of the supervising and judicial functions of the one, and most
of the administrative duties of the other ; forcibly interpolated
between the two ; and yet nominally leaving unimpaired the
legal powers and obligations of both of them.
Let us now enquire how the elaborate statutory constitutions
of these bodies of Incorporated Guardians actually worked in
practice. To the first rulers of these incorporations their organisa-
tion seemed devised upon the most perfect principles of adminis-
tration. " To guard against frauds and jobs," reports the most
enthusiastic of their founders, " all considerable contracts are
made at the quarterly meetings, in the most public manner.
No money is paid by the Treasurer but by order of a quarterly
meeting, or by warrant under the hands of the Directors and
Acting Guardians, in a quarterly meeting, or in a weekly com-
mittee assembled. And at these general quarterly meetings,
all the vouchers of the preceding quarter are stated and settled,
and the vouchers examined and compared with them. And
forasmuch as many persons pay to the rates, who are not con-
cerned in the management of the poor, these accounts, so stated
and signed by the members of the general quarterly meetings,
are referred to His Majesty's Court of Quarter Sessions, there to
be finally allowed and confirmed. 1 And here if any man can
suggest fraud or mismanagement before such final allowance
and confirmation, he may be heard. What better care could
be taken to prevent jobs ? " 2 "A committee room," as another
enthusiast tells us, " spacious, commodious and pleasantly
situated, is set apart for the weekly meetings of the Directors
and Guardians. . . . They consist of the principal gentry, clergy
and tenantry in the County. They visit in rotation, each taking
Incorporated Guardians, Colneis and Carlford, 27th December 1762). The
penalty on parish officers neglecting to raiso and pass over the assessments
duo was raised from £5 to £50 by the BIy thing Act of 1793 (33 George III.
c. 126).
1 So entirely was Quarter Sessions still regarded as a Court that this sub-
mission of accounts had apparently to be made by counsel, no one else being
allowed to appear on behalf of the Incorporation; and the Directors and
Acting Guardians of the Colneis and Carlford Hundreds complained that the
solicitor's and counsel's fees, at five guineas each time, had cost them £73 in
five years.
2 Rev. R. Canning, in The Christian's Magazine, 1703, vol. iii. pp. 29, 30.
FAILURE OF THE GENTRY 131
a month. Two Directors from the gentry, three Acting Guardians
from the yeomanry, with the Clerk, form the weekly meeting.
The governor of the House attends to answer enquiries and
complaints. He brings up his report of the material events of
the preceding week. All business respecting the economy of
the House and current expenses is then settled. The stores and
provisions are inspected, the apothecary who attends for a yearly
stipend, is examined with respect to the sick. In this whole
affair no person complains of the fatigue of attendance, but
rather takes pleasure in the discharge of so useful an employ-
ment." x It was, in fact, assumed that the compulsory in-
corporation of all the substantial gentry and the leading tenantry
of the district as Guardians would ensure the exercise of a constant
oversight, by those on whom fell the main burden of the rates,
over the administration carried on at their joint expense. When
it was objected to the Incorporation that no one would take the
trouble to look after them, their sanguine promoters rejoined as
a conclusive answer that, " As the attendance is so easy, we may
reasonably expect that it will be complied with, especially as
it will always be the interest of the persons whose attendance is
wanted that this affair should succeed well." 2 It is needless to
say that the great bulk of the squires and clergy neglected, from
the outset, to attend even the quarterly meetings, or to pay any
attention to the House of Industry. There was, indeed, nothing
for the Guardians — as distinguished from the Directors and
Acting Guardians — to do at their meetings, after they had once
elected the President, the other officers, and the two executive
bodies. 3 Even at the first meeting of a new Incorporation only
1 TJioughts on the Construction and Polity of Prisons, by Rev. John Jebb,
1786, p. 11. He had resigned a Suffolk living in 1775, and thus probably wrote
from memory of the early years of the Houses of Industry.
2 Rev. R. Canning, in The Christian'' s Magazine, 1763, vol. iii. p. 29.
3 In some of the Acts the apprenticing of children and the letting out of
the poor for lure was apparently reserved to the Guardians as a whole (Mitford
and Launditch Act of 1775 ; Blything Act of 1793 ; also the letting out of the
poor to work in harvest time, in the East and West Flegg Act of 1775). The
process in 1797 is described for us by Sir F. M. Eden. The boys and girls at
14 are " drafted out to the parishes to which they belong. If a person to
whose lot a child falls should refuse to take him or her for a year (which is the
stated term) he forfeits 20s., which goes to the master who accepts his allot-
ment ; if he should likewise refuse, he also forfeits the same sum, which is
then paid to the third person on his accepting the child ; when the year is
expired, the child is again put by lot to another master, in case his old master
does not wish to keep him, and he is not able to provide for himself " (The
132 INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
a few score persons would deign to put in an appearance ; and
these had perforce to elect themselves as the 24 Directors and
the 24 or 36 Acting Guardians that the Act required. 1 The
two executive bodies were, therefore, in effect, self-elected,
renewing themselves on the occurrence of vacancies by simple
co-option. Vacancies remained, however, long unfilled, owing
to the difficulty of finding persons willing even to promise to
serve. 2
Though no such distinction is expressed in the Acts, both
the intention and the practice seems to have been for the Directors
to be chosen from among the clergy and gentry, and the Acting
Guardians from among such substantial farmers and tradesmen
as possessed the statutory qualification. 3 The Directors assumed
as their sphere the decision of important matters, such as the
erection of a building or the borrowing of money, whilst the
current administration of relief, and the daily management of
the House of Industry was left principally to the Acting Guardians,
though Parliament had striven to secure that some, at least, of
the Directors should also be present. What happened in practice
was that the separate meetings of the two bodies were dropped,
as was that of the Guardians at large. Only one kind of meeting
was held, both quarterly and annually, this being attended
indiscriminately by Directors and Acting Guardians, at which
formal resolutions were passed, and various kinds of relief were
administered. For the actual management of the House of
Industry the Directors and Acting Guardians divided themselves
up into small committees of about five, each being supposed to
attend to the management for one month, and to be absolved
Slate of the Poor, by Sir F. M. Eden, 1797, vol. ii. p. 455). The Colneis and
Carlford amending Act of 1763 transferred all the powers of the Guardians to
the Directors and Acting Guardians.
1 At the first meetings of the new Incorporations, the following attendances
were roeorded : 50 (MS. Minutes, Incorporated Guardians, Colneis ami Carlford);
31 (ibid. Loes and Wilford, 1st July 1705).
2 "Notwithstanding the Act of incorporation requires all vacancies to be
Oiled at each quarterly meeting after they respectively happen, then- are at
this time three, two of them of about a year's standing, and the third "f more
than two years ami a half" (Report of the Committee appointed t<> inquire into
the Actual State of the House of Industry at Melton, 1791, p. 13).
3 In the Loes and Wilford [ncorporal i"n in 1 slV> ] slN;, ou< of the 2 I I >in 'tors
11 were clergymen and 3 esquires : whilst the Acting Guardians were all styled
*' Mr." (List of the Directors and Acting Guardians in tin Hundreds of Loes and
Wilford, with their months of attendance <it the House of Industry for the years
1826 1826).
NON-A TTENDA NCE 1 33
from meetings all the rest of the year. 1 In actual practice we
find, in case after case, most of the Directors and Acting Guardians
not attending meetings of any sort, and hardly any of them ever
going to the House of Industry ; the whole management being
left, practically for years together, in the hands of the paid
officials. It was in vain that the Act of Parliament prescribed
penalties for non-attendance, and that resolutions were passed
threatening to put the penalties in force. In the Loes and
Wilford Incorporation, when the grave financial position had
led, in 1791, to a committee of enquiry, it was reported that
within the preceding ten years there had been forty-five meetings
at which there had been no quorum ; that the prescribed weekly
committees had not been held ; and that in no one case had any
Director or Acting Guardian obeyed the bj^elaw which required
each of them individually to visit the House at least once in the
course of the particular month assigned to him. 2 Within five
years after the reorganisation that followed this investigation,
the system had again broken down. The Directors and Acting
Guardians then tried the experiment of dividing themselves,
not by months in the year, but into nine continuous subject-
committees ; for religion and morality, industry, maintenance,
clothing, medicines, building and repairs, finance, law and
apprenticeship respectively ; each being instructed to meet at
least once a quarter as a minimum. 3 We gather that this proved
no more successful than the preceding arrangement. When the
meetings were called at the House of Industry no members
whatever attended. 4 When they were held in the more comfort-
able surroundings of the White Hart Tavern at Wickham Market
the record was not much better. 5 In some Incorporations the
device was invented of permitting the Acting Guardians to
appoint deputies to attend in their stead ; with the result, as
might be imagined, that the privilege was " scandalously '
abused ; " the person chosen to discharge " the delegated office
being often " so far from equal to its duties that he could not
sign his name to the accounts he admitted, nor read even what
1 Rev. R. Canning, in The Christian'' s Magazine, 17G3, vol. iii. p. 29.
2 Report of the Committee appointed to inquire into the Actual State of the
House of Industry at Mellon, 1791, p. 13.
3 MS. Minutes, Incorporated Guardians, Loes and Wilford, 2nd July 1796.
4 Ibid. 5th July (as regards three meetings), and 11th October 1798.
5 Ibid. 11th April 1805 ; 6th January 1806 (2 present).
134 INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
he allowed." 1 In despair of securing a better attendance for
any length of time the more active and zealous Directors and
Acting Guardians of these Incorporations put their trust in the
formulation of elaborate " Rules and Orders." ' When general
laws are once established," fondly remark the compilers of one
such code, " the public is in no danger of losing at any future
time any of the advantages which a former zeal had promised,
or a past vigilance had procured. For should that zeal here-
after abate, or that vigilance relax, the institution by means of
its General Rules, remains like a machine, which, having its
springs of motion within itself, will, with but an ordinary atten-
tion, and only common application, go on to perform without
interruption its accustomed functions, and to produce without
variation its usual benefits. Nothing therefore can be more
unjust than the common objection to Houses of Industry and
similar institutions that, however well they may be administered
at first, they will at length fall into neglect. For do but establish
General Rules and the objection is at once obviated." 2
- The Suffolk and Norfolk Houses of Industry were thus practi-
cally handed over, sooner or later, to the management of the
officers, under such " Rules and Orders " as the zeal and wisdom
of the squires and clergy had provided. These officers consisted,
as a rule, of a Clerk to the Incorporation, usually a local attorney,
paid a small salary 3 for the formal business of the Annual
Meeting and the preparation of the necessary documents ; a
Treasurer, one of the Directors or Acting Guardians, who kept
the current balances for his own profit, but sometimes received
also a small stipend. 4 More important than these, who seem
seldom or never to have visited the institution itself, was the
Steward or Master or Governor of the House of Industry, who
ran the whole establishment, managed its few acres of land,
directed its little manufactures, governed the pauper inmates,
1 Report of the Committee appointed to inquire into the Actual State of the House
of Industry at Melton, 1791, p. 13.
2 Rules and Orders for . . . the Directors and Acting Guardian* of the
Poor of the Hundreds of Imcs and Wilford.
3 Ten guineas a year (MS. .Minutes, Incorporated Guardians, Loes and
Wilford, 1st July 17ti.">) ; twenty pounds a year (ibid. Loes and Wilford, 27th
June 1708) ; thirty pounds a year (An Account of the Proreeiliinjs of the Special
Committee . . . to enquire into the Expenditure in the lionet of Industry at
Heckingham, 17!).'{).
4 Six guineas a year (MS. Minutes, Incorporated Guardians, Loes and
Wilford, 1st July 1705) ; twenty pounds a year (ibid. 14th October 1802).
THE OFFICIALS 135
and was evidently the mainspring of the administration. For
this responsible position the Guardians seem nearly always to have
allowed a salary of £40 a year with board and lodging, 1 sometimes
with a trifling bonus on the amount of wool spun, or other pro-
duction of the paupers 2 . . . a remuneration which did not
permit them to find anybody of greater administrative ability
than a bankrupt farmer, a village shopkeeper or a promoted
servant or labourer. The Governor was assisted by a Chaplain, at
£25 a year, who was for this sum to " read prayers daily and
preach one part of the day every Sunday, catechise the children
once a week every Wednesday, christen the children, visit the
sick and bury the dead." 3 There were also usually several
doctors appointed, at from £21 to £40 a year, one to physic the
inmates of the House, and the others to look after the outdoor
poor in particular districts. 4 Presently the larger Houses have
also a Matron, a Schoolmaster, and a Schoolmistress. 5 The
reader will be prepared to learn that the officers so appointed and
left practically uninspected to manage their several institutions
were seldom found satisfactory for any length of time. Not-
withstanding all the elaborate rules, it was impossible to prevent
the Governor of the House from embezzling the material, the
stores and the cash. 6 The quantity of food consumed could not
be made to bear any constant relation to the number of inmates,
and was always going up. 7
1 MS. Minutes, Incorporated Guardians, Colneis and Carlford, 22nd Nov-
ember 1757 ; ibid. Loes and Wilford, 27th June 1768 ; ibid. Loddon and Claver-
ing (An Account of the Proceedings of the Special Committee . . . to enquire into
the Expenditure in the House of Industry at Heckingham, 1793).
2 At the Tattingstone House of Industry the Guardians presented the
Governor annually with a " gratuity " of £50, together with £10 for his daughter,
who taught the knitting school, in lieu of salary (MS. Minutes, Incorporated
Guardians, Samford, 26th March 1833, 1st April 1834).
3 Ibid. Colneis and Carlford, 2nd October 1758 ; elsewhere it was £35 (ibid.
Loes and Wilford, 27th June 1768) or £30 (An Account of the Proceedings of
the Special Committee . . . to enquire into the Expenditure in the House of
Industry at Heckingham, 1793).
4 MS. Minutes, Incorporated Guardians, Samford, 26th June 1780. Pres-
ently this Incorporation tried the experiment of having one Resident Doctor
to do all the work, giving his whole time for a salary of £85 a year, with board
and lodging (ibid. 5th July 1791). The Loddon and Clave ring Guardians gave
as much as £105 (An Account of the Proceedings of the Special Committee . . . to
enquire into the Expenditure in the House of Industry at Heckingham, 1793).
5 MS. Minutes, Incorporated Guardians, Loes and Wilford, 11th April 1811.
6 Ibid. 29th June 1789.
7 In one Incorporation it was found that the aggregate weight of food per
head had risen by 33 per cent in fifteen years (An Account of the Proceedings
136 INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
There were, however, apart from mere shortcomings of
management, two developments in the working of these institu-
tions which, in their unforeseen effects, must, in any case, have
gone far to destroy whatever chance they may have had of
successful administration. The Directors and Acting Guardians
could not refrain, in spite of their rigid theories, from granting
practically indiscriminate outdoor relief. Before the first House
of Industry had been open a year, we see the grant of weekly doles
beginning, at first to " a bedridden man," then to widows, and
presently to families of good character. There was at first some
discrimination between those who were forced to enter the House
of Industry and those who were not. During the famine years
between 1795 and 1800, relief was given indiscriminately to all
the labourers, " head money " being often paid for each child
where there were more than one in the family. 1 In the final
stages of these Incorporations there came to be more outdoor
relief than indoor maintenance. For the ten years 1800-1810,
the figures in the Loes and Wilford Himdreds were £20,208 out-
door and £32,477 indoor ; in 1810-1820, £51,908 and £37,466 ;
and in 1820-1824, £23,917 and £15,037 respectively. 2
This result was partly caused by the change in the method of
apportioning the expenses of the Incorporation among the con-
stituent parishes, which was gradually adopted between 1801 and
1820. The original intention had been to relieve each parish of the
administration of its own Poor Law, charging it exactly what it
has previously paid as Poor Rate, and undertaking not to exceed
that sum. When the new Houses of Industry had paid off their
capital debt, it was contemplated that the charge upon the
parishes should be rateably reduced. In the Blything Incorpora-
tion a reduction of one-eighth was actually made from 1780 on-
of the Special Committee . . . to enquire into the Expenditure, in tlie House of
Industry at Hcckingham, 1793). The Governor's explanation was that " lie
was obliged to give the paupers more food than they wanted, or could eat, to
preserve order in the House " {ibid. p. 2).
1 "That there be a general relief to the poor families in each pariah in
the following ratio, viz. a family with 2 children, (Id. each; with 3 children,
8d. each; with 4 children, 9d. each. No children above the age of 12 yean
to bo allowed " (MS. Minutes, Incorporated Guardians, Samford, 19th January
1791)).
- Report of tlie. Committee appointed . . . to investigate the Receipts and
Expenditure for the Support of the Poor, 1825. A stirring protest was made in
I S2.S against the outdoor relief of the lilything Incorporation by Rev. Richard
What 'ley ; see his broadside of that date.
THE FINANCIAL RESULT 137
wards, the whole debt of £12,000 having been discharged. 1 The
Cosford Hundred, too, is reported by 1800 to have reduced its
debt of £8000 to £180, and to have reduced its Poor Rate by
three-eighths. 2 Generally speaking, however, the parishes con-
tinued to pay the same Poor Rates as they had previously done ;
and sometimes these were even increased. 3 In the course of a
few years the numbers of paupers belonging to the several parishes
inevitably underwent changes, whilst the parishes continued to
contribute in a fixed ratio. This led to complaints from those
parishes which found themselves paying in a higher ratio than
that of their current pauperism. To satisfy these complaints,
and arrange what seemed a fairer basis of contribution, it was
provided by various amending Acts, first that the parishes should
contribute according to a new triennial or decennial average ; 4
and eventually that each parish should bear the cost of the out-
relief of its own poor, and should contribute to the cost of the
House of Industry in strict proportion to the number of inmates
that it sent thither. This change in system had a disastrous
consequence. The amending Acts, in fact, unwittingly " offered
a direct premium for keeping paupers out of the House." 5 As
the expense per head in the House of Industry was high, each
parish saw its way to save money by giving small doles of outdoor
relief, rather than augment its numbers in the House. Finally, the
quondam " House of Industry " became for the parishes, only a
sort of co-operative hospital for the sick, an orphan asylum for
the deserted children, and a place to which the Overseers could
send any able-bodied poor to whom they did not choose to allow
the weekly dole. ^
For a generation, however, it was apparently still possible
to believe in the success of these Incorporations. We see them
1 History of the Poor, by Thomas Ruggles, 1794.
2 An Introduction to the Fifth Edition of Some Account of the Shrewsbury
House of Industry, by Isaac Wood, 1800, p. lviii.
3 In the Stow Incorporation they were increased by one quarter for three
years by common consent (ibid.). The Colneis and Carlford Act of 1790
authorised a maximum of double the former rate.
4 Mitford and Launditch Act of 1801 (41 George III. c. 63) ; Loes and
Wilford Act of 1810 (50 George III. c. 119) ; Blything Act of 1820 (1 George IV.
c. 6) ; First Report of Poor Law Inquiry Commissioners, 1834, Appendix C,
pp. 187, 264 ; General View of the Agriculture of Norfolk, by A. Young, 1804,
pp. 494-496.
6 First Report of Poor Law Inquiry Commissioners, 1834, Appendix C,
p. 194.
138 INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
repeatedly belauded by Poor Law reformers ; and even imitated in
various localities. Of these imitations we have already described
the most important, the Shrewsbury House of Industry. Of the
others we need describe only that established in the Isle of Wight.
The Isle of Wight, with its few thousand inhabitants scattered
among 30 parishes, all within a walk, and none containing any
considerable town, formed, it would seem, an obviously con-
venient unit of administration. The County Justices of the
Island, as we have elsewhere described, 1 effected an extra-legal
separation between themselves and their colleagues on the mainland
of the County ; held their own Quarter Sessions, and made their
own County Rate, virtually as if the Island were a distinct shire.
Yet so strong was the influence of the immemorial division into
parishes that, not until 1770, do we find on the Island any
common action as to Poor Law ; 2 and not for forty years after-
wards any common action as to road maintenance. 3
The thirty Island parishes, having an average population
during the first three quarters of the eighteenth century of a
few score families, were plainly incapable of organising separately
any sort of Poor Law institution (though Newport had some sort
of workhouse in 1732) ; and their Poor Law administration
had evidently remained of the most primitive rural type. In
1770, when the Suffolk and Norfolk Houses of Industry were
still in the first flush of reputed success, the principal gentry
and clergy of the Island met and decided to promote a bill
to enable them to follow so promising an example. Under
the Local Act of that session an Incorporation was formed
exactly on the model of those of the Suffolk Hundreds. Eighty
acres of Parkhurst Forest were acquired from the Crown, and
1 The Parish and the County, by S. and B. Webb, 1907, p. 429.
2 For the Incorporated Guardians of the Poor of the Isle of Wight, see tin-
Acts 11 George III. c. 43 (1771), and 16 George III. c. 53 (177G) ; General Y i, w
of the Agriculture of the Count;/ of Hants, by Abraham and William Driver,
1794 (containing a special section on the Isle of Wight by Rev. It. Warner) :
a long description in The State of the Poor, by Sir P. M. Eden, 1797, vol. ii.
pp, -33-266; Report of House of Commons Committee on Poor Laws, L817
(Sewell'a evidence) ; First Report of Poor Law Inquiry Commissioners, 1834,
Appendix A, I'ringle's Report, p. 305 ; The Isle of Wight System of Roads, and
System of Guardians of the Poor, not a Model, but a Warning to the Legislature,
1845.
3 In 1813 the Isle of Wight Turnpike Trust was formed, by 63 George HI.
c. 92; and did not come to an end until superseded by the County Count il
instituted for the Island under the Local Government Act of 1888 (The Story
of the Kings Highway, by S. and B. Webb, 1913, p. 236).
THE UNION OF RURAL PARISHES 139
a spacious House of Industry was erected to accommodate no
fewer than 700 paupers, who were employed in agriculture, making
corn sacks, weaving linsey woolsey, knitting stockings, embroidery
and lacemaking. Notwithstanding a lengthy description by Sir
F. M. Eden, we know little of the actual working of this constitu-
tion. The House of Industry long continued to enjoy a reputa-
tion for moderate success, though the industrial enterprises
yielded a very doubtful profit, and the Poor Rates were appar-
ently not reduced. We hear, at any rate, of no desire to revert
to parochial management. 1
There is something pathetic in the dismal uniformity of the
stories of the actual working of the carefully organised adminis-
trations of all these bodies of Incorporated Guardians of the
Suffolk type. The substitution of the enlightened and public-
spirited squires and incumbents for the selfish and ignorant parish
officers, and the organisation of the labour of the paupers in a
House of Industry, were everywhere going to reduce the Poor
Rates, and at the same time to afford a better provision for the
children, the sick and the aged. And there is reason to believe
that, for a few years in each case, the new bodies not only made
better institutional provision for the aged, the sick and the infirm,
but also effected some considerable reduction of actual pauperism.
As the parishes had to contribute rateably to the common charge,
whether or not they made use of the new institution, they
promptly disburdened themselves of all their poor, directing them
all to go to the House of Industry, and refusing ail outdoor relief. 2
So drastically was the reform effected in Suffolk during the first
few years that the common people rose in revolt ; and we hope,
in a future volume on Poverty and Crime, to describe the
picturesque little Suffolk rebellion of 1765, when a formidable
mob, armed with cudgels and scythes, perambulated the County
for a week, demolishing the new workhouses and compelling
Directors and Acting Guardians to sign written promises to desist
1 Another union of rural parishes was established in Sussex in 1812 (West-
firle, etc., Act).
2 The efficacy of this " test " in reducing the number of paupers was every-
where seen. Its drawbacks were not at first noticed. " This was an important
point gained," says a writer of 1813, " but many were unable to maintain
themselves, and unhappily were too refractory to accept of their maintenance
in the House. These necessarily commenced itinerant beggars, and got a
miserable livelihood by wandering through the neighbouring parishes " (General
View of the Agriculture of North Wales, by Walter Davies, 1813, p. 433).
140 INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
from erecting such places in which to imprison the poor — de-
manding, on the contrary, " that the poor should be maintained
as usual ; that they should range at liberty and be their own
masters." x When this miniature rebellion had been put down
by a troop of dragoons, the erection of the Houses of Industry
was continued, and the poor were swept into them. The new
buildings were, relatively to anything that had previously existed
in the separate parishes, spacious and well planned. 2 The arrange-
ments were carefully considered and humanely designed. 3 In
their provision for the education of the children and for the
medical attendance and nursing of the sick 4 they seemed to con-
1 A Letter to J. W., Esq., relating to Mr. G y's Pamphlet upon the Poor
Laws, etc., by XX, 176G.
2 " I generally found," said an Assistant Poor Law Commissioner in 1835,
" the House of Industry a substantially built and sometimes a handsome
structure. The Stow Hundred House had so palatial a character that 1 was
tempted to enquire whether any peculiar concurrence of circumstances had
occasioned the erection of an edifice, the appearance of which seemed to me so
little in unison with the wants of the houseless and necessitous poor. . . .
My enquiry soon elicited information that the character of the structure had
been usually attributed to the circumstance that it was situated in the imme-
diate vicinity of the country-seats of the Directors, who were naturally inclined
to adorn rather than disfigure the landscape. The future subject of chagrin
had not been anticipated: the Hundred House eclipsed some <>f the neigh-
bouring mansions ! " (Second Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners,
is::;;, p . 155).
:1 In the Suffolk Houses of Industry it was said, in 1775, " of the aged no
labour is required; their silver cord is loosed, and their golden bowl broken ;
the evening of their days is here made comfortable; they an- rescued from
want, and consigned to respect and tranquillity ; to them the doors are always
open, and whenever inclination and the weather tempts them abroad and their
strength permits, all proper indulgence is allowed ; or in the House they have
the liberty of decent rooms, where they form their little parties of conversation,
sit around the fire, and tell their tales of ancient times. Every married couple
ha a bed and a room distinct and appropriated to themselves, which they
have the liberty to lock up if they please, to retire to it when they please,
undisturbed, unintruded upon by others; and their children, if young, arc
lodged in the same or the adjoining apartments, under the immediate care of
their parents. And indeed, these decent lodgings for the married constitute
one of the most striking beauties and conveniences of each House " (Observations
on the. Poor Laws, by R. Potter, 1775, p. 41).
4 " Infirmaries are provided at a proper distance, that the disease may not
he Communicated to others. ... At Bulcamp there is also an Airin g House
to receive them for a time after their recovery, that no remains of the di
ma\ annoy others ; a caution worthy of imitation " (Observations on the Poor
. by R. Potter, 1775, p. :j9). Nevertheless, there v. riblo " putrid
fever" at the Bulcamp House in I7si (History of the Poor Laws, by Thomas
Buggies, 17!)4, vol. ii. p. 266). "Ordered that seven handbarrows be pro-
vided for the more safe and easy conveyance of persons to the House of [ndust ry
with broken limbs" (MS. Minutes, Incorporated Guardians, Colneis ami Carl-
ford, 31st January 1760).
INSTITUTIONAL ADVANTAGES 141
stitute an advance on anything that had hitherto been done for
the rural poor. " The poor came to us," says the worthy
originator of the first of these Incorporations, " in a most miser-
able and filthy condition ; they were clothed in rags, and some
of them, the children especially, almost literally naked. We
expected and were prepared for this, so that to prevent the in-
troduction of vermin, before they were admitted they were shaved
and cleansed thoroughly by washing in warm water, and then all
new clothed throughout from head to foot." x It was impossible,
as a later critic observed, to refuse approval to "institutions that
forced cleanliness upon those who are dirty, and wholesome food
upon those of depraved appetites." 2 Yet, within a very few years
in each case we see the eulogistic descriptions of the first period
succeeded by grave complaints. 3 The cost of maintenance
rises ; the industrial enterprises invariably become unprofitable ;
the Houses of Industry are decimated by epidemics, and plainly
have an excessive death-rate ; they even become places of horrible
demoralisation and disorder. A critic of 1813 observes that
" In whatever light these institutions are viewed . . . there is
scarcely anything to be perceived but degeneracy and ultimate
disappointment. Persons of judgment and deliberate reflection,
who once thought favourably of them, now produce reasons for
their apostasy . . . both in point of expense, and the morals
of the poor youth brought up there ; as well as the unnatural
state the old and infirm are confined to, among strangers who
cannot be supposed capable of much sympathy. Experience
also teaches us that the children brought up in such places, when
grown up are fit only for a manufactory . . . not for outdoor
employments, except, indeed, the men become soldiers (such as
they be) and the females . . . often have recourse to prostitu-
1 Rev. R. Canning, in The Christian 's Magazine, vol. iii. 1763, p. 30.
2 General View of the Agriculture of Shropshire, by Joseph Plymley, 1803,
p. 131.
3 For the complaints against the Houses of Industry of Suffolk and Norfolk,
and the management of the Incorporated Guardians, see The Report of the Com-
mittee appointed to inquire into the Actual State of the House of Industry at
Melton, 1791 ; An Account of the Proceedings of the Special Committee . . . to
enquire into the Expenditure in the House of Industry at Heckingham, 1793 ;
Report of the Committee . . . Loes and Wilford ... to investigate the Receipts
and Expenditure, etc., 1825 ; Ipswich Journal, 22nd October 1825 ; First Report
of Poor Law Inquiry Commissioners, 1834, Appendix C, pp. 187-198, 203-204 ;
First, Second and Ninth Annual Reports of Poor Law Commissioners, 1835,
1836 and 1843.
142 INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
tion." x Presently the constituent parishes, not finding their
Poor Rates reduced, and gradually discovering both the un-
profitableness of the enterprise and the demoralisation of the
inmates, themselves revolt against the system ; eagerly revert
to the grant of doles, and strive to reassume the management of
their own poor. In case after case, they obtain new Local Acts ;
sometimes according new powers and removing restrictions found
to be inconvenient ; sometimes fundamentally changing the
constitution, sweeping away the gentry and clergy, and replacing
them by a board elected by the parish Vestries ; 2 sometimes,
again, dissolving the Incorporation, selling or demolishing the
workhouse, and reverting to the parochial administration of the
Poor Law. 3 Already in 1813 it could be confidently predicted
that " These elegant structures will become deserted fabrics." 4
For this uniform failure, there were, as the student will have seen,
abundant causes in the nature of the legal constitutions with which
these Incorporated Guardians were equipped, and in the absence
both of any continuous administration by devoted amateurs and
of any class of salaried officials competent for such a task. But it
would be to miss the most important results of their experience
if we did not here mention, what we hope hereafter to demon-
strate in a subsequent volume on Poverty and Vagrancy, that the
principal object of all of them — that of so organising the labour
of the paupers as to make them a self-supporting community —
was, from the outset, a wholly impracticable one. Though this
golden dream did not finally fade out of the imagination, even of
competent Poor Law experts, until the reign of Victoria — though
it still periodically captivates the unwary — it was, we think, the
1 General View of the Agriculture of North Wales, by Walter Davies, 1813,
j>. 434. " The twenty-five parishes incorporated " [in the Samford Hundred],
we are told in 1797, " are almost unanimous in wishing to have the Incorpora-
tion dissolved ; as they think they can maintain their poor at less expense,
and with more comfort, at home; but this measure is strenuously resisted
by a neighbouring gentleman " (The Stale of the Poor, by Sir P. M. Eden, IT'.iT,
vol. ii. p. 692).
2 As in the case of Forehoe (3 & 4 William IV. c. 107, 1833).
3 As in the cases of Cosford and Polsted (47 George III. Bess. 2, c. 73, 1807) ;
Loes and Wilford (7 George IV. c. 1, 1826) ; and Shrewsburv (7 George IV. c.
141, 1826).
4 It is characteristic of the time that the writer remarks that " it is to
be regretted they wen- not erected on some powerful streams, that in case
they failed of their primary object, they might be converted into woollen or
cloth manufactories" {General View of the Agriculture of North Wales, by
Walter Davies, 1813, p. 433).
THE " MIXED GENERAL WORKHOUSE " 143
experience of the Incorporated Guardians of the Suffolk and
Norfolk Hundreds, together with that of the Shrewsbury House
of Industry and the Bristol Hospital of St. Peter, that actually
caused it to be abandoned by all competent Poor Law students.
The factors at Norwich, through whom the woollen yarn was
disposed of, were, to say the least of it, neither zealous nor
scrupulously honest. 1 At House after House the various manu-
facturing industries that were tried had eventually to be given up,
owing to the impossibility of so buying and selling, and so organis-
ing the labour, as to make a profit. The Houses of Industry
became then mere places to which the sick and impotent poor
were driven, and to which resorted such dissolute and worthless
persons as found the lax promiscuity not unpleasant. 2 " It has
. . . been long a practice," said the Loes and Wilford Com-
mittee in 1791, "to receive into your House at the approach of
winter a number of lazy, notorious and abandoned prostitutes
who, tainted with the foulest of diseases, resort thither for cure ;
and when the summer advances then quit their retreat . . . often
leaving as a pledge an unaffiliated child : and this, all, with im-
punity. Nay, instead of being kept apart, and fed on the
meanest viands, and compelled to a severe species of toil, the most
profligate of them are permitted in habits of familiar intercourse,
and even to board and to bed, not only with each other, but with
others of better character, and especially the young." 3 Nor did
their character improve. " Everybody concerned," wrote a
correspondent of the Ipswich Journal in 1825, " knows that this
1 Report of the Committee appointed to inquire into the Actual State of the
House of Industry at Melton, 1791.
2 It was at this stage that the Suffolk Houses of Industry were scathingly
described by Crabbe ; see The Borough, 1808 (Letter XVIII., " The Poor and
their Dwellings "). In footnotes to this eloquent poem, in the collected edition
of his Works (by his son, 1810), it is said, of systems of Poor Relief, " Of one
method only I venture to give my sentiments — that of collecting the poor of
a Hundred into one building. This admission of a vast number of persons,
of all ages and both sexes, of very different inclinations, habits and capacities,
into a society, must, at a first view, I conceive, be looked upon as a cause of
both vice and misery ; nor does anything which I have heard or read invalidate
the opinion : happily the method is not a prevailing one, as these Houses are
I believe still confined to that part of the kingdom where they originated
(p. 242). . . . These odious Houses of Industry seem, thank God, to exist only
in Suffolk, near the first founder's residence (one proof they are not very bene-
ficial), in which the poor of a whole Hundred are collected in one building —
well fed and clothed I grant — but imprisoned for life " (p. 234).
3 Report of the Committee appointed to inquire into the Actual State of the
House of Industry at Melton, 1791, p. 10.
144 INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
House has been made use of as a kind of second-hand prison for
all the incorrigible, pilfering rogues and vagabonds among the
men, and all the worthless strumpets and vilest among women —
in short the very scum of the Hundreds." 1
The Vestry Executive
We need not dwell at any great length upon the remaining
types of Incorporated Guardians of the Toor. Where the parish
was large and populous, there seemed no need for union with
other parishes ; but the lack of adequate authority to buy and
build and manage an extensive institution, and the vagueness
of the powers of the parish officers, sometimes led to the creation
of a statutory executive, nevertheless retaining some connection
with the " inhabitants in Vestry assembled." Thus, the growing
parish of Manchester, which had tried to get a statutory Corpora-
tion of the Poor in 1731, but had failed through sectarian jeal-
ousies, 2 obtained an Act in 1790, by which the Churchwardens
and Overseers for the time being were themselves created a
corporate body, expressly empowered to borrow money, and to
maintain the workhouse, whilst remaining individually in the
old relation to the Vestry.
We may note a few other examples of this creation of a
statutory body to serve as an executive for the Parish Vestry. 3
In the important parish of Birmingham an exceptionally demo-
cratic Local Act of 1783 (23 George III. c. 54) established a
body of 108 " fit and substantial persons " as Guardians of the
Poor, to be elected every three years by all the ten-pound rate-
payers. Power to appoint Assistant Overseers and to pay them
by poundage had to be obtained by a second Act in 1806 (46
George III. c. 44). Additional powers were given by another
Local Act in 1831 (1 & 2 William IV. c. 67) ; but it is signi-
ficant that the franchise was then raised from a £10 to a £12 cat ing
occupancy, whilst the qualification for a Guardian was fixed at
1 Ipswich Journal, 12th March 1825.
- History of the County Palatine of Lancaster, by Edward Baines, L836,
vol. ii. pp. 293, 306; Municipal Origins, l>y F. H. Spencer, L911, p. 14.
:i Sec the Act :>n (licu'L'c 111. c. 81 ; Municipal Origins, by I". II. Spencer,
1911, 17, 305; .! Report of ///< Committee of the Associated Ley payers of the
Township of Manchester, 17!>l ; and other local sources cited in The Parish and
the County, by S. and B. Webb, 1*J07.
THE VESTRY EXECUTIVE i 45
occupancy of a £20 tenement. This last Act is interesting chiefly
as giving the first statutory authority for the establishment of a
creche, as a means not so much of educating the children as of
preventing juvenile crime ; and perhaps also of facilitating the
industrial employment of women by manufacturers eager for
cheaper labour. The Guardians were empowered to rent rooms
for the reception of any children of the " poor of the parish,"
whose parents were willing to place them during working hours
in the Guardians' care, for employment in such manner as the
Guardians might decide under the supervision of a salaried
caretaker. 1 Unfortunately, as we learn in 1843, this interesting
experiment was never put in operation.
But it was in the densely populated parishes of the Metro-
politan area that we find the largest number of statutory bodies
formed, virtually, as executives for the ancient Vestry. In the
eighty years between 1750 and 1830 there were established more
than fifty such bodies, usually for single parishes, large or small ;
but occasionally (as in the case of St. Nicholas and St. Paul,
Deptford) for combinations of adjacent parishes. The Church-
wardens and Overseers are nearly always ex-officio members,
and frequently also the Rector or Vicar, together with a pre-
scribed number of " substantial and discreet persons," elected by
the inhabitants in Vestry assembled, or by the Close Vestry
itself. The variety of these constitutions in detail is, however,
almost endless ; 2 and there is noticeable a tendency to replace
1 Municipal Origins, by F. H. Spencer, 1911, pp. 295-296. The preamble
of the Act (1 & 2 William IV. c. 07) is worth quotation : " And whereas many
persons in the said town of Birmingham, who receive parochial relief, would
be enabled to provide for their families by their industry if their children under
seven years of age could be taken care of during the hours of labour, and it
would greatly tend to diminish crime and the number of juvenile offenders
and pauperism if such children were placed during such period in some room
or place for their protection ; and whereas it would be beneficial if the Guardians
had authority to apply for the purposes aforesaid a portion of the relief which
such persons would otherwise receive for their children." For the contemporary
evolution of local government in Birmingham, see The Manor and the Borough,
by S. and B. Webb, 1908, pp. 157-160.
2 See the analysis given in Municipal Origins, by F. H. Spencer, 1911,
pp. 116-126, and Ninth Annual Report of Poor Law Commissioners, 1843,
pp. 230-251.
Among the bodies thus established may be mentioned the Guardians (or
Trustees, or Governors and Directors) of the Poor of East Greenwich (26
George II. c. 100 ; 9 George IV. c. 43) ; Christchurch (26 George II. c. 98 ;
37 George III. c. 79) ; St. Nicholas and St. Paul, Deptford (27 George II. c. 38) ;
St. Luke's (30 George II. c. 42) ; Bermondsey (31 George II. c. 45 ; 31 George III.
L
146 INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
the elective element by persons named in the Act, renewable by
co-option. Their statutory functions were more nearly identical.
They were empowered to acquire or erect a workhouse, and to
provide within for the poor, either by employment or otherwise ;
to teach or apprentice the children ; to apprehend vagrants,
beggars, wandering persons or deserted children, and to send
them to the workhouse ; to call upon the Vestry to levy rates
for all the expenses, and in default, to levy the necessary rate
directly upon the inhabitants. 1
The Reorganised Vestry
In a small number of cases, nearly all in the Metropolitan
area, we find the Parish Vestry itself superseded, either at once,
or by a subsequent Act, by transformation into a new statutory
body, on which the desired additional powers are conferred.
We have, in our book on The Parish and the County, sufficiently
described the evolution of these parish constitutions. In some
c. 19) ; St. James, Westminster (2 George III. c. 58) ; St. Matthew, Bcthnal
Green (3 George III. c. 40) ; St. Mary, Whitechapcl (3 George III. c. 53) ;
St. Andrew, Holborn, and St. George the Martyr (6 George III. c. 100 ; (i
George IV. c. 175); St. Botolph, Aldgate (G George III. c. 64); Liberty of
Saffron Hill, Hatton Garden, and Ely Rents (10 George III. c. 80) ; St. Martin's
in the Fields (10 George III. c. 75) ; St. Botolph, Bishopsgate (12 George III.
c. 79) ; St. Sepulchre (12 George III. c. G8) ; Old Artillery Ground (14 Q&
III. c. 30) ; St. Saviour's, South wark (14 George III. c. 75) ; St. Leonard,
Shoreditch (14 George III. c. 29; 53 George III. c. 112); St. Giles in the
Fields and St. George, Bloomsbury (14 George III. c. 108) ; St. Marylebone (15
George III. c. 21) ; St. Mary, Islington (17 George III. c. 5) ; St. James and
St. John, Clerkenwell (15 George III. c. 23) ; Mile End (20 George III. c. 66 ;
53 George III. c. 37) ; St. John, Wapping (22 George III. c. 35 ; 23 George 111.
c. 32; 59 George III. c. 15); St. John, Southwark (26 George III. c. 114);
St. George's, Hanover Square (29 George III. c. 75); Hampstoad (39 & 4U
George III. c. 35) ; St. Pancras (44 George III. c. 47 ; 45 Gcorgo III. o. 99) :
Woolwich (47 George III. c. 3); St. George's in the East (46 George III.
c. 46) ; Ratcliffe (50 George III. c. 83) ; St. John, Hackney (50 George III.
c. 190) ; Poplar (53 George III. c. 84) ; Liberty of the Rolis (50 George III.
o. 84); Paddington (5 George IV. c. 126) ; Letrisham (54 George III. c. 43) ;
St. Bride's, Fleet Street (7 George IV. c. 114).
1 The Metropolitan statutory Poor Law bodies have been even less studied
than those of provincial cities or rural Hundreds. They are usually quite
red by Hie parish historians. We have been able to consult the MS.
Minutes of those of Paddington, St. Pancras, Islington, Marylebone, Woolwich
and various parishes in the city of London ; see the index references in The
Pariah and the County and The Manor and the Borough, by S. and B. Webb.
.Much useful information is afforded by Municipal Origins, by F. 11. Spencer,
H»ll.
EXPERIENCE AND OUTCOME OF GUARDIANS 147
cases — as at Woolwich in 1807, 1 at Chelsea in 1821, at Islington
and Paddington in 1825, and at Kensington in 1826 — we have
the transformation of the Open Vestry, which might be attended
by all the adult inhabitants, into a more or less representative
body, of which at least a substantial portion was annually elected
by the more substantial householders. In a few instances, as
we have described in Marylebone in 1768 and St. Pancras in 1819, 2
we see the peremptory supersession of the Open Vestry by a body
of persons designated in the Act, and renewing themselves by
co-option.
The Experience and the Outcome of the Incorporated Guardians
The long drawn-out experiments in the establishment of in-
corporated bodies for Poor Law administration — extending as
they do over a century and three-quarters, and relating to both
rural and urban conditions in all parts of the country — make up
a confused medley which it is difficult to analyse or to classify.
With regard to constitutional structure, we have to note that,
whilst invariably including in their membership a strong ex-
officio element, the new Poor Law bodies introduced what was
then a novel feature, in that they nearly always depended, to
some extent at least, upon popular choice, either by nomination
by the Vestry, or by actual election by the inhabitants, with or
without a definite qualification for the franchise. In this respect
they differed essentially in form from the Court of Sewers that
we described in our last chapter, and even from the Turnpike
Trusts and the Improvement Commissions, which stand, on the
whole, subsequently to them in date, and will be described in
the chapters that follow. The relief of the poor, at that time
wholly defrayed from the proceeds of the local rates, was
apparently regarded, even by the Parliaments of the period, as
rightly involving at any rate some degree of democratic control.
To pass from the constitution of these statutory Poor Law
bodies to their working — that is, to the practical effect for good
or evil of all this organisation — we must confess to having neither
the information nor the time needful for any accurate estimate
1 As to this, see the graphic vision of "parish politics " given in Municipal
Origins, by F. H. Spencer, 1911, pp. 22-32.
2 The Parish and the County, by S. and B. Webb, 1907 ; for Marylebone,
see also Municipal Origins, by F. H. Spencer, 1911, pp. 15-19.
148 INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
of the total result ; and this, in any case, would be more appro-
priately dealt with in connection with the history of Poor Law
administration in general. But from such evidence as we have
been able to study, we have formed a few general impressions,
which may here be given, as to the peculiar advantages and
disadvantages of these statutory Poor Law authorities, as com-
pared with the ordinary parish government of the time. The
statutory authorities had, in general, the advantage of sub-
stituting for annually changing, and often unwilling individual
administrators, a continuously existing and deliberately selected
council, acting through salaried officials. Hence we watch, in
the Incorporated Guardians, the initiation of something like
Poor Law policy ; always crudely empirical and usually ill-
adapted to attain its end, but superior, by the mere fact of being
a policy, to the variable and haphazard action of individual
Overseers. It was, perhaps, an accident that all the Incorporated
Guardians made the workhouse an essential part of Poor Law
administration. They wanted the workhouse for an impractic-
able end, namely to organise profitably the labour of the paupers.
Incidentally, however, they introduced what was at the time
the only practicable " test " of the genuineness of able-bodied
destitution — the " offer of the House," x with the usual result
of greatly diminishing pauperism in the earlier years of their
existence. This advantage they usually lost after a short time,
owing to their failure to recognise the device which they began
by unconsciously adopting. A more equivocal expedient, at
any rate under the unscientific administration of the period,
was the institutional treatment of the children, 2 the infirm and
the aged. Finally, it must be remembered that more than a
third of the statutory Poor Law authorities had the undoubted
advantage of combining a number of small or thinly populated
1 " It is probable that at the passing of Sir Edward Knatohbull'a Act in
1722, the actual effects of the Local Acts had suggested Bounder views as to
the specific utility of workhouse management, for . . . workhouses were . . .
used, with the greatest effect, strictly as tests of destitution. . . . The el'
of these workhouses in reducing the poor rates in many of Hie parishes appears
to have been immediate, and the reduction varied from 2."> to 6.5 per cent on
the previous expenditure" (Mr. Twistleton'e Report on Local Acts, in Ninth
Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, 1S4IS, p|>. 96-97).
2 The Bristol Corporation of the Poor started by collecting over two hundred
children in their workhouse (Transactions of the Corporation of the Poor in the
Citi/ of Bristol during a period of 1^6 years, by James Johnson (Bristol, 1826),
p. 21).
LACK OF SUPERVISION 149
parishes into a union large enough to escape the greater part
of the difficulties presented by the Law of Settlement, as well
as to admit of some sort of classification of paupers, and the
employment of permanent salaried officials. 1 On the other
hand, it was a grave drawback that these statutory Poor Law
authorities escaped all outside control. Such authoritative
criticism, audit and control as were elsewhere given to the Over-
seers by Petty Sessions, individual Justices of the Peace and the
Open Vestry were, to all intents and purposes, non-existent for
the statutory body ; and there was, as yet, no central authority
to take their place. This independence was the more dangerous
in that the Incorporated Guardians sat always in secret, pub-
lished no accounts or regular reports and were subject to no
outside inspection. 2 They were moreover endowed, by the
careless apathy of Parliament, with extensive powers of appre-
hending, detaining, controlling and punishing, entirely at their
own discretion and without appeal, not only the inmates of their
institutions, but also such " idlers and vagrants " as they chose
to arrest. These unpleasant characteristics were seen at their
worst in those cases in which the statutory authority was entirely
independent of popular election. The greatest failures of all
1 In Bristol, and most of the city Incorporations formed upon its model,
there was the further advantage of a common system of assessment and rate
collection for the whole city. " The whole city," writes the enthusiastic
annalist of the Bristol Corporation of the Poor, " became, after 1696, as one
parish, and one law officer did the business in which nineteen had been em-
ployed before. Another great advantage arose in having one general rate or
assessment made upon the whole city, and not on each parish separately, the
magistrates having the power to apportion out the sum required for each year's
service of the poor, amongst the different parishes according to their ability to
pay it " (Transactions of the Corporation of the Poor in the City of Bristol during
a period of 126 years, by James Johnson, p. 7). Stress had been laid on this
advantage in John Locke's report of 1697, " that in all cities and towns corporate
the poor's rate be not levied by distinct parishes but by one equal tax throughout
the whole corporation " (Report of the Board of Trade to the Lord Justices in the
year 1697, reprint of 1787, p. 112).
2 Tho Plymouth Incorporated Guardians expressly refused, in 1813, a re-
quest that the Mayor should be empowered to inspect their " ill-arranged mass
of buildings in the centre of the town." ".That this Court, after due considera-
tion, cannot consistently accede to the proposition that a clause be inserted in
the bill, or that the bill be so altered and amended to allow the Chief Magistrate
or other acting magistrate of the Borough free admission into tho House of
Correction within the workhouse and to visit all the prisoners confined therein "
(MS. Minutes, Incorporated Guardians of Plymouth, 28th April 1813) ; Ninth
Annual Report of Poor Law Commissioners, 1843, pp. 83-123 ; The State of
the Poor, by Sir F. M. Eden, 1797, vol. i. p. 257.
i 5 o INCORPORATED GUARDIANS OF THE POOR
were the Suffolk and Norfolk Unions where the governing council
was nominally composed of the whole body of wealthy residents.
We do not pretend to be able to balance these advantages
and disadvantages. Perhaps more important than any of them
was the fact that'? these statutory bodies made experiments,
which, unlike the casual expedients of the annually changing
Overseer, were systematically recorded and could be subse-
quently investigated. Their experience in workhouse manage-
ment was the means by which the idea of obtaining profit, or
even maintenance, by " setting the poor " to work, was finally
disposed of. Even more important in the evolution of English
Local Government was the fact, to which we have already
referred, that it was the statutory Poor Law authorities that —
in contrast with the County Justices, the Manorial Courts, the
Municipal Corporations and the Parish Vestries of the time,
and also with the Courts of Sewers described in the preceding
chapter — based their administration on appointed and per-
manently serving salaried officers, who were merely directed
and sux>ervised by committees of the governing body. In their
" principle of combining an elective controlling power with a
paid executive," x or as we should nowadays say, in their organisa-
tion of a primitive Civil Service under administrative committees,
they stood in marked contrast both with the practice of previous
English Local Authorities (and also with that of the contemporary
New England townships), and they may almost be said to have
originated the typical constitutional machinery of the English
Local Government of to-day.
With the passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834
and the adoption of a policy of national uniformity in Poor Law
administration, we may for the present leave the Incorporated
Guardians. 2 The 1834 Act contemplated the prompt dissolution
of these special bodies, and the merging of their areas in the new
Unions to be formed. The Poor Law Commissioners were
expressly empowered to issue their rules, orders and regulations
1 First Report of Poor Law Inquiry Commissioners, 1834, Appendix A,
Chapman's Report, pp. 522-523.
2 Their subsequent history is to be traced, apart from their own voluminous
MS. records, usually in the possession of the existing Board <>f Guardians for
the locality, in the successive Annual Reports of the Poor Law Commissioners
(especially the Ninth and Tenth); of the Poor Law Board (especially the
Twentieth), and of the Local Government Board. See also History «/ the
English Poor Law, by Thomas Maokay, 1899, pp. 331-340.
SUBSEQUENT HISTORY 151
to all Unions and parishes under Local Acts ; to change the
areas of the Unions to which these Acts applied ; to alter the
method of election of their governing bodies, and even to dissolve
any Union formed under Local Act. But in order to avoid
opposition to the passing of the Bill from the Incorporated
Guardians, who might have claimed to be heard by counsel,
and who could have fomented considerable opposition, the power
to alter the method of election was made subject to the consent
of a majority of the local ratepayers and property owners,
whilst the power to dissolve the Unions was made dependent on
the prior consent of two-thirds of the Guardians themselves.
Without power to dissolve, the Poor Law Commissioners were
afraid peremptorily to command. The result was to delay for
half a century the complete uniformity of Poor Law administra-
tion at which the Somerset House administrators persistently
aimed. In 1843 the Poor Law Commissioners directed their
Assistant Commissioners to make a special enquiry into the
administration of all the Poor Law bodies claiming to exist under
Local Acts, the results of which were published in the Ninth and
Tenth Annual Reports of the Commissioners. In 1844, by 7 & 8
Victoria c. 101, the requirement that two-thirds of the Guardians
must approve before the Incorporation could be dissolved was
dispensed with as regards parishes of less than 20,000 population ;
and the smaller bodies were successively dissolved and their
parishes absorbed into the new Unions. The Incorporated
Guardians in the Metropolis and the large towns, dealing with
populations exceeding 20,000, could still stand out, and they
long continued to do so. Nearly a quarter of a century later,
those in the London area were brought into line in 1867 by the
operation of the Metropolitan Poor Act, 1867 (30 Victoria c. 6) ;
which, with its establishment of a Common Poor Fund, permitted
the Poor Law Board to assimilate all the Metropolitan parishes
to a uniform system. Only very slowly and gradually were the
remainder of the larger Local Act Incorporations, by successive
slight acts of administrative pressure and encroachment by the
Local Government Board, assimilated to the ordinary Unions
created by administrative order, and brought into line with the
rest of the Poor Law administration of the country.
rll WMT.U 111
iiu nuMUi' nu'srs
Liiong all [\w Statutory Authorities, aa we have called them
the Local Governing Bodies established for partioular plaoes by
Special Aits of Parliament 01 Royal Commissions the m*
numerous were the Turnpike Trusts. Of Courts oi Sewers in
England and Wales there may have been, at one time or another
during the eighteenth century, a hundred or bo, 01 [noorpoi
ated Guardians oi the Poor we have particulars oi about 19
Of separate bodies oi Police or [mprovement Commissioners, lav.
or small, presently to be described, nearly three hundred may be
enumerated. l>ut of Turnpike Trusts, from the beginning of the
eighteenth century, steadily inoreasing in number throughout I
oentury and a quarter, there came to be, by 1835, over UOO
simultaneously in existence; or twice as many as all the other
kinds oi Statutory Authorities put together. The Turnpike
lists were, in the tirst quarter oi the nineteenth oentury, about
ti\i> times as numerous as the Municipal Corporations, and nearly
twenty times as numerous as the Courts oi Quarter Sessions that
i rned tho Counties. 1 Only the immemorially ubiquitous
Parish and Manor, for which no statin other formal origin
q be assigned, es I them in number. In the records of
Einglish Local Government oi the eighteenth century, these Turn
pike Trusts which eventually levied an annual revenue oi more
than one and a half millions sterling, accumulated a debt oi sown
millions, and administered twenty-three thousand mik
— out no moan figure. But their principal importance lies not in
their constitution but in their function. They are oi int.
oh r the part they played, during a ] and
SOUR ES OF INFORM I HON
a lull, in the evolution "I tin' immemorial public servioe of road
maintenance. Their Legal constitutions, tor whatever plaoe <>r in
whatever deoade they were established, were of one uniform
pattern; and Mir type showed little capacity for diversity of
administrative prooedure ox extra-legal developments, The
origin of these bodies ; their complicated relation:; to the Parish,
lo the County and to the whole coimniinily of road users; and
the intervention m i heir ;i ii'au 's, between L800 and L835, Qot only
of Parliament but also of two government departments, all
present features of interest to the student, of I lie constitutional
development of English Local Government as a whole. 1
We need not repeat, the account, given elsewhere > of I he
1 of the Turnpike Trusts no 13 itematic history apart from ohap, vil. of
wax Story of the King's Highway, 1913, pp. L15 150, and vol. i. of The Develop
mini of Transportation m Modern England, by W. T. Jaokman, L918, pp, t.i
283 has been written, and the student needing more detail than 1h suppliod
in these two books oan only i>e referred n> such • n< ral references and desorip
tions as are bo be found in the History of Private Bill Legislation, by I*'. Clifford,
• iss7, vol 11. ohap. vie ; 1 Treatise <<n Roads, by Sir Honry Pamell, after
wards Lord Congleton, 1st edition, 1833, 2nd edition, 1838; Life of Thomas
Telford, Civil Engineer, Written by Himself, edited by John Riokman, 1
Voyages dun-: la Grande Bretagne, l>y Baron Charles Dupin, 1824, broisidme
partie, " Foroe Commeroiale," vol. i. p. 33; Descriptive and Statistical lecount
of the British Empire, by J. R. M'Cullooh, 1846, voL 11. ohap. v. see. ■"{ ; and
to the almost Innumerable Parliamentary Ri ports on Highways and Turnpike
throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, A good vision of the
working of a Turnpike Trusl Is afforded by the two Report i "i a Select Com
miller mi various Metropolitan Turnpikes, one printed at length In the House
of Commons Journals for 1763 (vol. udx. pp. 646-664), the other presented in
I7«'.. r . ; in the brief aooounl oi the ' Whetstone Turnpike Trust, 1764 1863,"
in Middlt \ex and Hertfordshire Votes and Queries, vol. Iv. pp. 91 94 ; in 1 Turn
pike Key, or an lecount of tin' Proceedings of the Ex* ter Turnpike Ti u • . 1 i 13
1884, by W. Buckingham, 1885 ; and in the inter ting volume entitled Minutes
of the Epping and Ongwr Highway Trust, \"*>'> 1870, by Bonjamin Winstone,
L891. Muili incidental Information of all sorts 1h afforded In the exoellent
manual, Digests <>J the General Highway and Turnpike Laws, by John Soott,
177K. Rebecca and her Daughters, by Henry Tobit Evans (Cardiff, 1910),
supplies detailed informal ion "I 1 be most notorious of Turnpike riots. The MS.
Minutes <>f the eleven hundred Turnpike Trusts, where they are preserved at
all, are mostly hidden away i>> solicitors' offloes, but thej are 000a ionally to
be found an •■ municipal or oounty arohives. < lounty Counoils would be well
advised u> Invite the Local solicitors bo plaoe these records in safety at the
( 'mi iii x Hall. We have bad access bo the MB. Minutes of the Oldham Turnpike
Trust, 1806 1880; the Duraley and Berkeley Turnpike Trust, 1779 1874, and
a few others; l>m. we bave f - -nn< J 1 it Information In the (literally) tens of
thousands of bills, petitions, reports of oommittees and proceedings in Portia
nieiii, relating n> roads during the past two centuries, and in the innumerable
references bo the roads hi the I kn and pamphlets oited in our Story of tht
King's Highway aoA in the present ohapter. A fuller list will be found in t )>•
Bibliography of Roadmahing and Roads in //<< United Kingdom, by Dorothy
Ballen, 19] 1 The Story of the Kim/* Highway, L918, ohaps. 1 Iv,
154 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
manner in which the English highways were constructed and
maintained prior to the seventeenth century. At the accession
of Queen Elizabeth, when English highways were perhaps at their
worst, and even during most of the ensuing century, it is hardly
an exaggeration to state, there was, from one end of England and
Wales to the other, no such thing as a road in the modern meaning
of the term. To the citizen of to-day the " King's Highway "
appears as an endless strip of land, with definite boundaries,
permanently and exclusively appropriated to the purpose of
passage, and having a surface artificially prepared for its peculiar
function. To the citizen of the twelfth, the fifteenth or even the
eighteenth century, the " King's Highway " was a more abstract
conception. It was not a strip of land, or any corporeal thing,
but a legal and customary right — as the lawyers said, " a perpetual
right of passage in the Sovereign for himself and his subjects over
another's land." 1 What existed was, in fact, nothing but a right
of way, from village to village, along a certain customary course,
which, if much frequented, became a beaten track. And we must
add to this understanding of the immemorial highways that they
were used, by the inhabitants of the locality, almost exclusively
for foot traffic, of man or beast. That the ways must in winter
be impassable for wheeled traffic was habitually taken for granted.
This primitive conception of locomotive needs lasted, in remote
corners of England, right down to the end of the eighteenth
1 See, for instance, Rolle's Abridgement, title " Chimin," p. 392, where it
is laid down that " the King has nothing but a perpetual right of passage for
himself and his people"; or The Lair Relating to Highways, by W. ('. and
A. Glen, 1897. Thus, to this day, " the right of the publio in a highway is
an casement of passage only — a right of passing and repassing. In (he language
of pleading, a party can only justify passing along, not being in, a highway "
( Pratt and Mackenzie s Law of Highways, by William \V. Mackenzie, lt>t h edit ion,
1911, p. 2). Hence it has been expressly held that there is no right to use
a highway for racing, or for a public meeting (il>i<l.) ; nor may a man stand
still on the road to shoot pheasants flying over it (R. v. Pratt. L855, 4 E. and
B. 860). He may not even walk up and down so as maliciously to interfere
with others' rights (Harrison v. Duke of Rutland, 1893, 1 Q.B. 142) — see The
Common Law of England, by Blake Odgcrs, 1911, vol. i. pp. 7-10. It is only
inli initially that it has quite recently been suggested that a pa along
a highway may lawfully stop to rest on it for a short time, or to take a sketch
(per A. L. Smith, L.J. in Hickman r. Matsey, 1900, 1 Q.B. Tod). Any other
uso of a highway is a trespass.
But in legal definitions, as in common parlance, the term highway is now
used to denote the land as well as the easement. 'The term highway in its
widest sense comprises all portions of hnul over which every subject of the
Crown may lawfully pass " (Pratt mid Mackenzie's Lair of Highways, by \V. \V.
.M icken/ie. Kith edition, 1911, p. 1);
THE PRIMITIVE HIGHWAY 155
century. In Cumberland, we are told, "in the Spring of the year
the Surveyor used to call on the people to go with him to open
the tracks over the common, from which the old tumble-wheel
carts of the country had been excluded during the winter ; for,
in 1792, the principal part of the corn was conveyed to market
on the backs of horses." x The ideal of road maintenance which
the old-fashioned Englishman set before himself was, in fact, no
more than " removing every kind of impediment that incommodes
or molests the traveller, such as want of proper drains, overhang-
ing trees and hedges, timber-logs, etc." ; in short, everything
" that prevents the roads from growing better of themselves." 2
It was the obligation to maintain a highway of this kind —
that is, a free passage from village to village — that had been, at
common law, and by the statute of 1555, 3 cast upon the Parish ;
and it was this obligation that was assumed to be fulfilled, down
to 1835, by the system of six days forced " Statute Labour," to be
rendered by all householders, under the superintendence of one of
them, compulsorily serving his year as Surveyor of Highways ;
the whole under the authority of the Justices of the Peace. If
the Parish failed to fulfil this obligation of road maintenance, it
could, as we have described in The Story of the King's Highivay,
be indicted and fined in the Courts of Justice. It was a com-
paratively late development when the Parish was allowed, with
the sanction of Quarter Sessions, to levy a limited Highway Rate,
in those cases in which the " Statute Labour " had proved to be
insufficient to keep up the free passage. 4
1 Speech by W. Blamire, Cumberland Pacquet, 2nd February 1830.
2 A General Plan of Parochial Police, by W. M. Godschall, 1787, p. 60.
3 2 & 3 Philip and Mary c. 8, 1555.
4 So far as we are aware, the earliest rates levied by Parishes or Counties
for road maintenance occurred under the Commonwealth (see our Story of the
King's Highway, 1913, pp. 20-23, 25 ; A Proposal for Maintaining and Repairing
the Highways, by E. Littleton, 1692, p. 10 ; Three Centuries of Derbyshire
Annals, by J. C. Cox, 1890, vol. ii. p. 227 ; The Interregnum, by F. C. Inderwick,
1891, p. 107). Such rates, as we have described, were authorised temporarily
by statutes of 1662 and 1670 (13 & 14 Car. II. c. 6, and 22 Car. II. c. 12) ;
and we find them, though very exceptionally, actually levied (e.g. MS. Church-
wardens' Accounts, St. Mary's, Reading, Berkshire, 22nd May 1670, 24th April
and 15th September 1671, 31st March 1673, 12th April 1680) ; in one case,
even as early as 1663, when the Manorial Court of Spittal and Tweedmouth
mentions " the assessment that was gathered for repairing the highways "
(see The Manor and the Borough, by S. and B. Webb, 1908, vol. i. p. 95). But
not until after 1691 (3 William and Mary, c. 12) do they become frequent ;
and not until 1835 could they be levied by the Parish, as a matter of course,
without the special sanction of the Justices in each case.
156 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
During the seventeenth, and still more during the eighteenth
century, we see constantly increasing what was practically a new
use of the roads, namely the through traffic of wheeled vehicles
of every kind. The soft tracks, with which the local agricultur-
ists had contented themselves, proved quite insufficient to bear
the waggons, carts, post-chaises and coaches by which they were
now coming to be thronged. In 1694 — to trouble the reader
with only one quotation — " the highways . . . were grown so
foundrous (as the law terms it) and so extremely bad, that the
owners and occupiers of lands in most places have been neces-
sitated to suffer their fences to lie down, and to permit people to
travel over their enclosed ground ... by reason of the impass-
ableness of the highways." 1 Meanwhile, the parishes through
which the main thoroughfares of the nation passed, were com-
plaining that, owing to this new use of the King's Highway,
it had " become so ruinous and almost impassable that the
ordinary course appointed by all former laws and statutes of this
realm is not sufficient for the effectual repairing of the same." 2
To cope with this difficulty, one locality after another petitioned
Parliament to permit the taxation of the users of the road. We
find the suggestion in Littleton's pamphlet of 1692. " Every
person," it was urged, as came to be taken for granted for the
ensuing century and a half, 3 " ought to contribute to the repair
of roads in proportion to the use they make of, or the convenience
that they derive from them." Moreover, the increasing traffic
called, in some places, actually for new roads, or for the re-making
of bits of road. Neither the Parish, nor any other authority,
had power to make a new road ; a power which could be given
only by special statute, for which the principal inhabitants of this
or that locality would petition. From the Restoration onwards.
1 A Guide to Surveyor* of the Highways, by G. Meriton, 1694 Already in
1010 we hoar of " great hurt and spoil of fences and grounds, with riding and
mi' Hi!' corn, and auoh like, by shifting and seeking the best way
diversely " (A Profitable Work to this Whole Kingdom concerning the Mending
of the Highways, by Thomas Procter, 1610). It had long before been held by
the judges that if the beaten track became foundroue the Bang's subjects
might diverge from it. in their right of passage, even to the extent of "going
upon the corn" (A Treatise of the Phis of the Crown, by W. Hawkins, edited
Leach, 1795, voL i. p. 153).
loCar. II. c. 1, 1663.
3 A Proposal for Maintaining and Repairing the Highway*, by B. Littleton,
!» p. 11 ; An Inquiry into tin Means of Preserving tht Public Ixoads, by
Rev. Henry Homer, 17G5, p. 18.
THE COMING OF THE TURNPIKE 157
successive Parliaments, falling back on certain mediaeval pre-
cedents, 1 acceded to these requests. Hence the turnpike 2 and
its toll.
The power of taking toll of passengers, and expending its
proceeds on the maintenance of the road, was, however, first
granted, not to special bodies established for the purpose, but to
the Justices of the Peace in Quarter Sessions.
In 1656, the Vestry of the little parish of Kadwell, in Hertford-
shire, petitioned Quarter Sessions for help with its roads. In vain
had the inhabitants tried to keep them in order ; these highways
still " stand in much need of repair, which they are no ways able
to perform (though the whole revenue of the parish should be
employed), the Great North Road lying for two miles together in
the said parish, and the nature of the soil being such as the winter
devours whatsoever they are able to lay on in the summer, and
the parish is so small that it hath in it all but two teams." In
1663, perhaps as a tardy outcome of this petition, it was repre-
sented to Parliament by the Justices of the Counties of Hertford,
Cambridge and Huntingdon that " the ancient highway and post
road leading from London to York, and so into Scotland ... by
reason of the great and many loads which are weekly drawn in
waggons " to Ware (whence there was water carriage to London),
1 Road tolls seem to have been unknown in England in 1650, as they had
been for a century or more, except where a municipal corporation charged a
Through Toll, or other octroi, and possibly in the case of a few private franchises
as to bridges. Various isolated precedents for their levy by royal licence on
particular stretches of road can be found in the records of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. Authority seems to have been given in 1267 to levy a
toll in a Gloucestershire manor ; " capiat in feod unum dener, le quilibet
caracte transeunte per manerie qua de Thormerton et Littleton " ; see Index
of the Patent Rolls, Henry VII., and Notes and Queries, 27th December 1851.
" In 1346 a toll for pavage was levied by the City authorities on vehicles passing
from St. Giles in the Fields to Temple Bar " (History of Private Bill Legislation,
by F. Clifford, 1885-1887, vol. i. pp. 4-5, vol. ii. pp. 3-8).
2 The name " turnpike " was given from the adoption of " horizontal
tapering bars of iron or wood suspended upon a rigid perpendicular pillar,
around which, as an axis, they revolved. They corresponded," says an author
of 1845, " with those modern cross wickets or sidegates, which may be seen in
the vicinity of certain towns, with this difference that, until the dues or toll
was paid, these pikes or styles could not be made to turn either to right or
left " (Road Reform, by William Pagan, 1st edition, 1845, 3rd edition, 1857,
p. 1). "A turnpike road," said a learned judge in 1840, " means a road
having toll-gates or bars on it, which were originally called ' turns.' . . . The
distinctive mark of a turnpike road is the right of turning back any one who
refuses to pay toll " (Lord Abinger, C.B., in Northam Bridge Co. v. London
and Southampton Railway Co., 1840, 6 M. & W. 428). " Pike " came popularly
to be used for the toll-bar or toll-gate ; and also for the toll itself.
158 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
and " the great trade of barley and malt ... is become so ruinous
and almost impassable that the ordinary course appointed by all
former laws and statutes of this realm is not sufficient for the
effectual repairing of the same." On this petition Parliament
fell back on various ancient precedents, and authorised, by a
special statute, each of these three Quarter Sessions to erect gates
and levy tolls at Wadesmill (Herts), Caxton (Cambridgeshire)
and Stilton (Huntingdonshire) respectively, for the next eleven
years, and to devote this revenue to specially repairing the parts
of the Great North Road within their respective jurisdictions. 1
Only one of these three gates was successful. That at Stilton ex-
cited so much local opposition that it was never erected. That
at Caxton was put up, but was so easily evaded that practically
nothing was collected. The third, at Wadesmill, was thus the
first effective toll-gate in England. For over thirty years it seems
to have remained unique. A generation later, when the state of
the roads was exciting much attention, Parliament gave similar
powers by special statutes, in respect of other pieces of road, to the
Justices of Essex, Norfolk, Surrey, Gloucestershire, Somerset,
Cheshire, Bedfordshire, Wilts, Hampshire and Kent ; sometimes
to the Justices of a particular Division of the County in special
Highway Sessions, sometimes to a certain number of Justices
representing different Counties, but more usually to the Justices
of the whole County in Quarter Sessions assembled. 2 For fifteen
1 15 Car. II. c. 1 (1663) renewed by 26 Car. II. (1674), 4 & 5 William and
Mary (1692), and again by 6 Anne (1707), as to which see Honso of Commons
Journals, 8th, 21st, 27th January and 6th March 1707. The 1663 Aot is
described in the Story of the King's Highway, pp. 115, 148 ; HisU ■/// <>j < 'om mercc,
by A. Anderson, vol. v. p. 44; A Treatise on Roads, by Sir Eenry I'amell,
afterwards Lord Congleton, 1833, p. 17 ; History of Private Bill Legislation, by
P. Clifford, 1885-1887, vol. ii. pp. 12-14; in "The Old North Road," by J. II.
Sinde, in Archaeologia Aeliana, part ix., 1858, pp. 237-2.V> ; Notes from the
Hertfordshire County Records, p. 6 ; and Byegone Hertfordshire, by W. Andrews,
1898, p. 264. But most of these Acts have remained unnoticed, and the whole
episode deserves further study.
2 The Harwich road, Essex (7 & S William III. c. 9, 1695, containing the
first statutory mention of the word " Turnpike ") ; the Wymondham and
Attleborough road, Norfolk (7 & 8 William ill. c. 26, 1 tV*> ~> ; renewed by 7 Anne
c. 4, 1708, 12 George I. c. 22, 1729, and 20 George II. c. 16, 1746) ; the Reigate
and Crawley road, Surrey (8 & 9 William 111. C. 1">. 1^97); the Birdlip and
(llmicester road, Gloucestershire (!) & lo William III. c. is. L698, renewed by
!> George I. o. 31, ! 7l':>. and 16 G > 1 1. c. 21, 1742); the Minehead mads.
Somerset (12 & L3 William OCT. e. 9, L701) ; the Woodford road, Essex (1 Anne
s. 2. o. 1*'. see House of Commons Journals, 19th November L702, renewed by
10 George I. c 9, 1723, and 17 George II. o. 9, 174:5) ; the Barnhill to Hatton
Ii road, Cheshire (4 & 5 Anne c. 9, 1705) ; the Hockley and Woburn road,
TURNPIKE TRUSTEES i 59
years it looked as if the maintenance of the high roads was to
become a function of the County Justices, either in Quarter
Sessions or in special Highway Sessions. Suddenly the course
of legislation changes. After 1711, so far as we have been able to
ascertain, Parliament no longer resorted to the County Justices
for its new road authorities. In 1706, 1 in the case of the highway
between Fornhill in Bedfordshire and Stony Stratford in Bucking-
hamshire ; in 1709, in the case of the Sevenoaks and Woodsgate
Road ; and again in 1710, for certain highways leading from
Hertfordshire into Huntingdonshire, forming part of the Great
North Road, we have the creation of new statutory bodies, con-
sisting of so many named persons, not necessarily or exclusively
Justices of the Peace, who were empowered to levy tolls and to
fill vacancies by co-option. These Acts appear to have been
the first of what proved to be a long series of statutes creating
special bodies of Turnpike Trustees, which came, eventually, to
exist in every county of England and Wales, administering all
the more important highways, and raising and spending an annual
revenue exceeding that collected by any other kind of Local
Authority of the period.
These Turnpike Trusts, established or renewed by, literally,
thousands of separate Acts of Parliament, 2 were given almost
Bedfordshire (5 Anne c. 10, see House of Commons Journals, 22nd February
1707) ; the Sheppard's Shord and Devize3 road (5 Anne c. 26, see House of
Commons Journals, 13th, 26th and 31st March 1707) ; the Bath roads (6 Anne
c. 1, 1707, renewed by 7 George I. c. 19, 1721) ; the Portsmouth road (9 Anne
c. 8, 1710) ; the Gravesend and Rochester road (10 Anne c. 34, 1711). Almost
the only mention of these Acts, and then only of one or two of them, down to
our Story of the King's Highway, 1913, pp. 115, 148, and The Development of
Transportation in Modern England, by W. T. Jackman, 1916, is that in the
History of Private Bill Legislation, by F. Clifford, 1885-1887, vol. ii. pp. 15-16.
1 5 Anne (1706), not printed, but mentioned in House of Commons Journals,
3rd and 27th March 1707, 15th and 24th February 1710, and in preamble of
3 George I. c. 15 (1716); 8 Anno c. 15 (1709); renewed by 11 George I. c. 15
(1725), 9 Anne c. 7 (1710), of which we may quote the quaint preamble :
" Whereas by the happy union of this kingdom the great post road from
London to North Britain is become much more frequented than the same
formerly hath been, and a great part of that road ... is become very ruinous,
insomuch as without very great hazard and danger members coming up to
Parliament and other persons cannot pass that way . . . for remedy whereof,
etc."
2 The arrangement of the statute law is so defective that it is difficult to
state with certainty what Acts were passed. Down to 1702 turnpike statutes
were " public," and printed in ordinary form ; from 1702 to 1720 they were
all classified as " private " and were not always printed, so that our informa-
tion may be incomplete ; from 1720 to 1753 they were printed and bound
160 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
identical constitutions and functions. The Trustees were always
empowered to construct and maintain a specified piece of road,
to which their powers were especially confined, and to levy tolls
on that piece of road upon certain kinds of traffic. The powers
were invariably given only for a limited term of years, usually
twenty-one ; but every Trust, in due course, applied for a new
Act containing its existence for another term, so that they became
virtually permanent Local Authorities, entirely unconnected with
either County or Parish, Manor or Borough.
The Turnpike Trusts were distinguished from the Municipal
Corporations on the one hand, and from the Incorporated
Guardians and Improvement Commissioners on the other, by
the uniformity and rigidity of the constitutional structure which
Parliament imposed upon them. In all the thousands of Turn-
pike Trusts established or renewed between 1710 and 1864 *
the governing body consisted of a number of persons named in
the Act as Trustees, who were supposed to be qualified by the
possession of a definite amount of property, and who were re-
inforced occasionally by a certain ex-officio element, such as
the Mayor of a neighbouring Municipal Corporation, 2 or even
occasionally the Mayor, Aldermen and Recorder of an important
Borough through which the road passed. 3
After 1820 it becomes usual in the Acts to add, as ex-officio
members, all the Justices of the Peace for the particular County
or Division. In all cases the Trustees were permitted, but were
not required, to fill vacancies arising in their membership by the
co-option of duly qualified persons. All such bodies had their
with the ordinary public general statutes ; from 1753 to 1798 they were bound
separately, and arc described as " Public Acts not printed in the collection,"
or, more succinctly, as " Road Acts " ; whilst from 1798 to 18G8 they were
included among "Acts Local and Personal." After 18G8 there are three
divisions, viz. Public General Acts, Local Acts and Private Acts (seo House of
Commons Journals, vol. lii. p. 413; History of Pri<->ttr Hill Legislation, by
I '. ( lifford, 1887-1889, vol. i. p. 2(59 ; Legislative Methods and Forma, by Sir C. P.
Ilbcrt, 1901, pp. 211-27 ; Municipal Origins, by F. H. Spencer, 1911, pp. 46-48).
1 This applies to all Turnpike Trusts formed after 1710. In the few earlier
Acts, as we have mentioned, the new powers were usually entrusted to all the
Justices of the County, or of one of its Divisions, or (as in the exceptional Act
of 1707 for the road from Bath to Kingsdown Bill, 6 Amir o. 1) to Bel
Justices, representing three Counties and the City of Hath respectively.
2 As at St. Albans (1 George I. c. 12, 1714).
3 As at York (23 George II. c. 38, 1750); and Durham (60 George III.
o. 3, 1810) ; in- tin- Mayor ami Aldermen only, as at Launceston (33 George III.
c. 59, 1760).
THEIR TEMPORARY CHARACTER 161
jurisdiction confined to the one subject of road maintenance, 1
and geographically limited to a particular stretch of road,
defined in the Act itself. In no case that we have found were
the Turnpike Trustees entitled to levy a rate, or even to claim
a share of the various Highway Rates made by the Justices in
particular parishes. This incapacity to levy a rate distinguishes
the Turnpike Trust, along with the Manorial Courts, from all
other local governing bodies. Another marked feature of the
Turnpike Trusts which they share with the Courts of Sewers,
but which distinguishes them from the Incorporated Guardians
and the Police or Improvement Commissioners, as well as from
the Manorial Courts, was the provision for their automatic
extinction at a certain date. The earlier Acts confined the
existence of the Turnpike Trusts which they created to varying
periods such as eleven, fifteen or twenty years. 2
From 1702 onwards the term was uniformly twenty-one
years, at which they all remained till 1833, when it was enlarged
to thirty-one years. As a matter of fact, as in the analogous
case of the Commissioners of Sewers, every Trust applied for
and obtained successive extensions of its term, so as to become
virtually a permanent body. It was perhaps for this reason
that the Courts of Quarter Sessions made no demur to the
establishment of these new authorities, on which the Justices
individually found themselves placed. 3
1 Very occasionally indeed a Turnpike Act may contain a clause giving
power to pave, light and cleanse certain streets ; but in such cases the special
power is always given to some authority other than Turnpike Trustees of the
ordinary type (e.g. in 6 Anne, c. 1, 1708, to the Mayor, Recorder and Justices
of the City of Bath in conjunction with County Justices). The only instance
that we have found of a Turnpike Trust having statutory power to watch and
light is that of the Shoreditch to Enfield Trust (1790). Conversely, we find
occasionally a body of Police or Improvement Commissioners obtaining power
to construct or maintain roads in an urban area, or to exercise over their roads
some of the powers of Turnpike Trusts (see, for instance, the Beverley Act,
13 George I. c. 4 ; the Leeds Act, 49 George III. c. 122 ; the Sudbury Act,
6 George IV. c. 70 ; the Yeovil Act, U George IV. c. 116 ; the Exeter Act,
2 & 3 William IV. c. 106 ; Municipal Origins, by F. H. Spencer, 1911, p. 274).
a Thus the earliest Act of 15 Charles II. c. 1, prescribed 11 years ; one of
4 & 5 William and Mary, 15 years ; one of 8 & 9 William III. c. 15, 20 years ;
and one of 1 Anne, sess. 2. c. 10, 21 years.
3 Where, as frequently happened, the road lay in more than one County,
there was an additional reason for constituting a special bod}'. The earlier
Acts entrusting the powers to Quarter Sessions had broken down in such cases.
A Committee of the House of Commons in 1714 found the Great North Road
from Royston in Cambridgeshire to Waternewton in Huntingdonshire very
bad, ".notwithstanding that three turnpikes had been erected on the said road "
M
1 62 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
For the first half of the eighteenth century, in fact, every one
took it for granted that the Turnpike Trust, with the toll that
it levied, was only a temporary device, designed to cope with
the exceptionally ruinous state into which a bit of road had
fallen. It was not foreseen that this assumed temporary nature
of the new body would be practically inconsistent with its power
to borrow money without limit on the security of its income
from tolls, which it was able formally to mortgage to the lender,
though it could, of course, give legal security only for the un-
expired portion of the term which Parliament had granted.
The powers of these separate bodies of Turnpike Trustees,
conferred upon them as they were in the first instance by these
separate local Acts, varied indefinitely in detail, but showed in
the course of the eighteenth century certain general lines of
development. The main purpose of these Acts was, as regards
the particular piece of road dealt with, to bring additional
revenues and additional powers to the reinforcement of the
general highway law. The body of Trustees, who were, so to
speak, " incorporated " by a Turnpike Act, were entrusted with
the exclusive management of the designated piece of road, and
authorised to engage officers and servants, and to purchase
material and plant for its amendment and maintenance. They
were empowered to erect " toll-houses," " tollbars," " turn-
pikes," " crates " or " gates " on any part of the road under their
jurisdiction, and to exact, as a condition of passage, a toll on
all vehicles, horsemen and cattle passing through. 1 This novel
since June 1710. It appeared " that upon the first erecting of the toll gates
on that road some of the most ruinous parts thereof were tolerably repaired,
but that the Commissioners appointed to put the Act in execution seldom met
though obliged to it four times at least in the year; they being not able to
constitute a board without three Commissioners of the County of Cambridge
and three of the County of Huntingdon, wliich was found difficult to assemble ;
that this discontinuance of meetings caused a stop to be put to the working
on the said mad "' (Report of House of Commons Committee on Management
of money collected for repairing highways; see House of Commons Journals,
L5th April 1714).
1 The usual toll was from one to six pence. Thus, whilst a bone (
charged a penny, every stage coach, hackney coach, carriage, waggon or cart
charged sixpence, every BCOie of sheep a penny, every score of oal\
bogs twopence, and every score of cattle sixpence (8 & 9 William III. <■. i...
Reigate and Crawley Turnpike Act, 1697). Double tolls wen- usually ohs
on Sundays. A later specimen mikes the toll on a carriage drawn by six or
more horses one shilling, by four sixpence, by two or three threepence, by one
three halfpence : a one-horse cart or waggon paid a penny ; a two-horse ditto,
TOLLS AND TICKETS 163
impost differed radically from the ancient due, custom or toll
which some manorial or corporate authorities levied under royal
grant, in that it was strictly limited in duration, minutely specified
in amount, and legally applicable to a given public service. Thus,
as we have already stated, all Turnpike Acts were temporary
only, the usual period of their validity being twenty-one years,
after which, it was fondly assumed, the special need for extra-
ordinary repairs would have passed away, and the road might
be maintained free of toll by the ordinary highway revenue. For
over half a century it was even enacted, in most of the Turnpike
Acts, that if the roads were sufficiently repaired, and all debts
paid, before the end of the term, the Justices should order the
toll-gates to be removed, and bring the tolls to an end. 1 The
number and position of the toll-gates was usually left to the
discretion of the Trustees. But every Turnpike Act specified
the maximum toll that might be levied on vehicles, horsemen
or cattle (usually doubled on Sundays), and many of the Acts
included provisions against the exaction of repeated tolls on the
same day, 2 or in respect of passage along the same stretch of
road, whilst others contained elaborate exemptions in favour
three halfpence ; a horse, mule or ass, a halfpenny ; a drove of meat cattle,
fivepence a score ; a drove of calves, hogs, sheep or lambs, twopence halfpenny
a score (11 George II. c. 33, Loughborough and Derby Turnpike Act, 1737).
We do not find in England the ordinary French provision for exacting
double tolls at the entrance to the Metropolis, or any place at which the King
or Queen is staying (see, for instance, Liste generate des postes de France dressee
par ordre de . . . Comte Dargenson, 1751).
1 For power to bring the Turnpike Trust prematurely to an end, see, for
instance, 15 Car. II. c. 1 (1663), 8 & 9 William III. c. 15 (1697). A similar
power is given to Quarter Sessions in many Turnpike Acts down to the middle '
of the eighteenth century ; but we have not noticed it in any later Act.
2 The regulations as to tickets were varied. A ticket was given on each
payment of toll, and this freed the payer from any further payment for the
same animal or vehicle during the same day, according to the terms of the
particular Local Act and the orders of the particular Trustees, either at that
gate, or at that gate or some others, or at all gates on a particular section of
road, or at all the gates of the Trust. The " day " usually ended at midnight
(sometimes at midnight in summer and 10 f.m. in winter ; see 3 George I. c. 4,
Hampstead and Highgate Turnpike Act, 1716). A more complicated arrange-
ment prevailed on the Kensington road, where it was expressly ordained " that
for all droves of cattle passing through the turnpike gates, the tickets that
shall be delivered on Saturday shall be in force till Monday noon following ;
and the tickets that shall be delivered for droves of cattle every other day
besides Saturday shall be in force till the day following at noon " (House of
Commons Committee on the Management and Application of money collected
during the last eleven years for repairing any particular highway ; see House
of Commons Journals, 19th April 1763, vol. xxix. p. 646).
1 64 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
of persons who used only minute portions of the road (as, for
instance, in crossing from one field to another), or who were
engaged in particular occupations, or, in some cases, who owned,
occupied or inhabited particular premises. 1 It was always the
intention of Parliament that the payers of the toll should get
quid jwo quo in useful improvements. The tolls were, in some
cases, not to be levied until Quarter Sessions had bound some
" able and sufficient persons " in sureties to put the road in
sufficient repair within five years. 2 In most of the early Acts
it is expressly provided that the Justices in Quarter Sessions may
appoint fit persons to " survey the highways and enquire of the
toll, and in case of misapplication . . . they are to certify the
same to the Judges of Assize."
From the standpoint of modern administration, there were,
however, glaring shortcomings in the provisions of these Acts,
which, as we shall see, went far to frustrate the good intentions
of Parliament. The equitable incidence of the toll was under-
mined by clauses enabling the Trustees to grant preferential
rates to particular individuals or classes. There was no limit
to the amount of borrowed capital for which the Trustees could
mortgage the tolls, so that the mere interest on the mortgage
debt might easily absorb the whole revenue destined for current
repairs. Each generation of Trustees succeeded in obtaining a
greater measure of freedom from legal limitation or executive
supervision in the expenditure of their income : they could spend
what they pleased, borrow what they pleased and manage the
business as they pleased. They might, at their option, have
their own official establishment of collectors and surveyors, or
farm out both toll collection and road repair for lump sums.
1 Thus, an Act of 1746 contained a section exempting " the owners, occupiers
and inhabitants of Coley House, and of the farm adjoining thereunto . . .
their several workmen, servants and agents . . . with horses, cattle, coaches,
carts and carriages " (~0 George II. c. (i, Reading and PuntKeld Turnpike Act,
174<>).
1 For the provision making the levying of the tolls contingent on sureties
Eor the repair of the road, seo 9 & 10 William III. c. 18 (1098). In an early
Bedfordshire Act it was provided that " No turnpike is to be erected nor toll
demanded . . . nor shall the said causey, without the consent of the lord
... of the . . . manor ... be laid open for . . . carriages, until sufficient
security bo given by able and sufficient persons to the Justices of the Peace
. . . that the said way . . . shall within three years be sufficiently repaired
and amended " (5 Anne, c. 10, Hockley and Woburn Turnpike Act, 1706).
The Justices' power to investigate the state of the road and the amount of the
toll was given generally in 9 George I. c. 11 (1722).
INCREASING POWERS 165
And whilst the control given in the early Acts to the County
Justices over turnpike roads, and over the Trustees who managed
them, was, in the middle of the eighteenth century, gradually
removed, no new provisions were inserted requiring the Trustees
to account for their receipts and expenditure to any public
authority. Not less important were the powers gradually con-
ceded to these new authorities to alter, at their own discretion,
the means of communication between one place and another.
In the course of half a century they not only accumulated, in
their successive statutes, all the powers of the Justices under
the General Highway Acts but even added new ones. They
could buy land compulsorily in order to widen narrow ways and
improve gradients. They could erect bars against bye-lanes,
close up ancient highways, divert others at their pleasure and
compel every one to travel by the new road they had constructed.
In this way an ancient hamlet might find itself suddenly deprived
of a public road, in order that the journey from one town to
another might be shortened or straightened, or even so that a
particular mansion or farmhouse might be favoured with easy
access to the market town.
It is characteristic of the slovenly ways of the eighteenth-
century Parliament, and of the incapacity of the early Hanoverian
administrations, in all that concerned internal affairs that the
new bodies of Turnpike Trustees, exercising special powers over
small areas, were intruded into the complicated hierarchy of
English Local Government without any consideration of what
should be their relations to the older organisations of the Parish
and the County. 1 For the grant to the Turnpike Trust of power
to tax the users of the road was never intended by Parliament
to exempt the parishes through which the road passed from their
obligation of maintaining it, or to excuse any person from the
performance of Statute Labour or Team Duty. It seems to have
been assumed at the beginning that the modicum of repair to be
rendered by the Parish Surveyors of Highways and the unpaid
Statute Labour and Team Duty of the inhabitants would have
1 The state of the highway organisation of the Parish in the middle of the
eighteenth century may be well seen in the excellent work by John Shapleigh,
entitled Highways : a Treatise showing the Hardships and Inconveniences of
Presenting or Indicting Parishes and Towns, etc., for not repairing the Highways,
1749. Compare the earlier pamphlet by an anonymous Justice, For Mem/im/
the Roads of England, by J. P., 1715.
166 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
been completed before the special Surveyors appointed to lay out
the proceeds of the new revenue came on the scene. These
Surveyors were authorised to require the performance of such
additional labour as they thought necessary, " for which the said
Surveyors," declared Parliament, " shall pay unto such labourers
and to the owners of such teams, carts and wains according to the
usual rate of the country." l Presently the situation is simpli-
fied. The power to exact extra labour compulsorily is dropped,
and whatever additional service is required has to be hired in the
open market. On the other hand, in all that concerned the main-
tenance of the special length of road — the " turnpike road " —
the Surveyor appointed by the new road authority is gradually
invested with nearly all the powers of the Parish Surveyor of
Highways appointed from among the inhabitants. He is
authorised summarily to suppress nuisances, and enabled to take
compulsorily without compensation from the common or wastes,
Avithin the parish or without, or out of any river or brook, what-
ever " gravel, chalk, sand or stones " are needed for the mending
of his road ; and to resort for this purpose also to private grounds,
on payment merely of the actual damage done. 2 More important
1 So by the Act of 15 Car. II. c. 1 (1663) ; but no one was to be compellable
to travel above three, four or five miles from home, nor to work more than
two days in any one week, nor on any day in seed-time, hay-time or corn harvest
(7 & 8 William III. c. 9, 1695; so also 7 & 8 William 111. e. 2ti. 1695). The
power of the Surveyor to require this extra labour is given without limit in
9 & 10 William III. c. 18 (1698). In the Kent County records in 1729 wc
read that " it is ordered by this Court that it be referred to Thomas Marsh, Esq.,
one of I lis Majesty's Justices of the Peace for this County, and the resi of the
Justices of the Division wherein Longport lies, to settle and set the price of
labourers employed in and about the repairing, surveying and looking after
Boughton highways, in this County, on the London road," the amount B<
to be paid by the County Treasurer (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, East Kent,
10th October 1729).
2 As regards these powers, see, for instance, the nuisance and obstruction
clauses in 7 Ceorge II. c. 13 (1733) ; 1 George II. c. 33 (1727) ; 17 George II.
'•. 29 (1743); and especially the very comprehensive powers given in 20
pge 111. e. 71 (1780). As regards powers over private properly, see, for
instance, 15 Car. 11. c. 1 (Great North Road Turnpike Act, 1663); 7 t \ 8
William III. c. 9 (London and Harwich Turnpike Act, 1696); 6 Anne, e. 1
(Bath and Kingsdown Hill Turnpike Act, 1708). Subsequently, private in-
t safeguarded. The Surveyor has to pa. ible rates for
the material so taken from private [and (6 George I. o. 2.">. Stevenage and
Biggleswade Turnpike Act, 1720); later on, express notice must be given to
t he owner, and specific order made by Justices, after hearing objections (39 & 40
George III. o. 3, Leicester and Hinckley Turnpike Act, 1800). The 1663 Ael
had required pits from which materials were dug to be filled up and levelled,
" or else railed about ... so as that the same ma\ nol be deemed dangerous
s
THE SURVEYOR'S POWERS 167
still, from 1714 onwards, he is given express power to require the
performance under his own direction of a specific proportion of
the ordinary Statute Labour and Team Duty of the parishioners.
The proportion of the six days Statute Labour to which the turn-
pike road was entitled was sometimes specified in the Act at two,
three or four days ; or was left to be fixed by the Turnpike
Trustees or their Surveyor, with an appeal, in case of difference,
to the Justices in Petty or Special Sessions. Gradually the
apportionment comes normally to be settled by two Justices, on
the application of the Parish Surveyor of Highways. Sometimes
the Justices were empowered to allot particular parishioners, as
many as they thought fit, to labour on the turnpike road ; or
otherwise to settle what proportion of the whole six days due from
all the inhabitants should be so directed. 1 From 1716 onward
the Turnpike Surveyor was, in many cases, even given power to
agree with the parish for an annual amount to be raised by the
Parish Surveyor by a rate, and to be paid in a lump sum to the
Turnpike Surveyor, in lieu of this specific share of the Statute
Labour. 2 Hence the new turnpike authority found itself in
or prejudicial to man or beast " (15 Car. II. c. 1) ; an obligation not made
usual until the Public General Act of 1753 (26 George II. c. 28), which required
any holes or pits made in commons or wastes for this purpose to be fenced ;
and specific clauses to this effect again appear in many subsequent Turnpike
Acts, " so that " these pits " may not be dangerous to passengers or cattle "
(see 10 George III. c. 54, Norwich and Block Hill Turnpike Act, 1770).
1 The relations between the Parish Surveyor and the Turnpike Surveyor
thus became complicated. The Parish Surveyor of Highways was to deliver
a list of persons liable ; the Turnpike Surveyor was to give him notice of the
time and place for them to come ; he was then to summon all persons liable ;
and they were to put in three days' work on the turnpike road ; see 1 George I.
sess. 2, c. 25 (Tyburn and Uxbridge Turnpike Act, 1714, for what is now the
Bayswater Road, Notting Hill and Uxbridge Road) ; see also the detailed
clause in 13 George II. c. 9 (Hockliffe and Stony Stratford Turnpike Act, 1739).
As late as 1800 there was an appeal by a Parish Surveyor of Highways against
a conviction by Petty Sessions for not having summoned, in response to a
demand from the Turnpike Surveyor, certain inhabitants " to perform their
statute work upon part of the said road " (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions,
Lancashire, 15th July 1800).
For cases in which the Justices were left to fix the number of days' labour
to be given to the turnpike road or by whom it should be given, see 7 George I.
c. 18 (Highgate and Barnet Turnpike Act, 1720) ; 16 George II. c. 21 (Birdlip
and Gloucester Turnpike Act, 1742); 13 George II. c. 9 (Hockliffe and Stony
Stratford Turnpike Act, 1739) ; 17 George II. c. 9 (Harlow and Stump Cross
Turnpike Act, 1743).
2 For power to require a money composition, see 3 George I. c. 4 (Highgate
and Hampstead Turnpike Act, 1716) ; 4 George I. c. 4 (London and East
Grinstead Turnpike Act, 1717) ; 4 George I. c. 5 (Southwark and East Green-
168 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
possession of a money income derived, not only from its own tolls,
but also from the parish rates on occupiers. This income from
rates was, however, at no time anything but a lump sum com-
position of the Statute Labour and Team Duty. In no case that
we have found were the Turnpike Trustees entitled themselves
to levy a rate upon the owners or occupiers of property, or upon
the inhabitants as such.
Meanwhile nothing was done to relieve the Parish from the
risk of indictment and fine for the non-fulfilment of its obligation
to maintain all the highways within its area, including therefore
the turnpike road. With the rise in the standard of road main-
tenance that occurred in the course of the eighteenth century,
there came a corresponding change in the opinion of Assize
Judges, Justices of the Peace and Juries as to what constituted a
wich Turnpike Act, 1717) ; and many subsequent Acts. In 19 George II.
c. 19 (Liverpool and Prescot Turnpike Act, 1745), the power to raise the com-
position money by rate is expressly given to the Parish Surveyor of Highways.
These compositions naturally ed to embittered negotiations between the
Parish and the Trust. Hackney, for instance, was made to pay £100 a year
towards the Kingsland Road Turnpike Trust, and this arrangement was em-
bodied in 12 Anne, st. 1, c. 1 (1714). In 1741-1744 payment was, on some
pretext, withheld by the parish, and to compel the parish officers to collect
the necessary rate required a special Act (17 George II. c. 41, 1743), which
changed the composition for the future to 200 days' work of eight hours, by
teams of three good horses, able to carry 24 bushels each load, each to be
attended by two able men. Twenty-three years later, the Vestry Minutes
show the parties to be again at issue. " The parishioners present were
acquainted that the Trustees of the Kingsland Turnpike lload were making
an application to Parliament to enlarge the term and powers of the Acts re-
lating to that Trust, and that by the said Acts the Parish of Hackney are to
do yearly 200 days' statute work with teams on that road, or pay to the Trust
the sum of £100 in lieu thereof, and that by an Act of the last session of Parlia-
ment relating to the public highways, and the determination of His Majestj 's
Justices of the Peace in consequence of it, every person liable to do statute
work with a team might compound for the same for 4s. Gd. a day instead of
the former penalty of 10s. ; and that if the said Trustees should obtain a clause
in the said intended Act for this Parish to pay the Trust £100 per annum in
lieu of statute work, it would be a net loss to the Parish, as the Parish must
by composition lose 5s. (id. in every ten shillings." The Vestry thereupon
appointed a committee to watch the Bill (MS. Vestry Minutes, Hackney (Middle-
sex), 12th December 1767). Twelve years later the Vestry opposes another
Bill of the same Trust, because it was proposed to fix the rate of composition
for the parish contribution of statute labour at too high a figure (ibid. 23rd March
1789). The sum of £100 seems to have been a favourite one for the annual
composition of a large parish. The Surveyor of Highways of the Township
of Manchester had, down to 1812, for many years paid to the Trustees of the
( Hdhum Turnpike Roads a lump sum of £100 a year by agreement in " lieu of
statute labour and liability, by indictment or otherwise " (MS. Minute., oldham
Turnpike Trust, 29th August 1806, 11th September 1812).
INJUSTICE TO THE PARISH 169
state of good repair ; and Parishes found themselves fined for
highways in no worse condition than would, in the seventeenth
century, have been regarded as quite adequate to all legitimate
needs. Thus, when a Parish had to endure an inefficient or
impecunious Turnpike Trust, it was placed in an impracticable
position. It had lost all control over the repair of the turnpike
road, without having liberated itself from any of its respon-
sibilities. " As the law now stands," wrote Sir J. C. Hippisley in
1808 to the President of the Board of Agriculture, " if any part
of a turnpike road be out of repair, remedy is given by present-
ment or indictment of the parish, in which such road is situate,
subjecting the Parish to great expense and inconvenience,
although the nuisance be wholly imputable to the Trustees of the
turnpike." 1
This injustice moved even the Yorkshire antiquary Whitaker
to an outburst of indignation amid his genealogies and Church
annals. " It is a great iniquity," he writes in 1816, " as well as
absurdity that parishes and townships should be indictable or
presentable for the neglect or passive defaults of others over whom
they have no control, while they are condemned to be passive in
the introduction of expensive and burdensome roads through
their respective districts, and at the same time actively re-
sponsible for all the consequences occasioned by the fraud or
negligence of strangers. 2
The relation of the Turnpike Trust to the Rulers of the County
was less ambiguous than that to the parishes through which its
road passed ; but owing to the constant slight changes in the
law, difficult to express with accuracy. For the first half of the
eighteenth century, Parliament seems to have regarded the Turn-
pike Trusts as bodies to be superintended and controlled by the
Court of Quarter Sessions. Right down to 1835, indeed, Quarter
Sessions continued to be the tribunal of arbitration between the
Trusts and the various parishes with which they had dealings,
determining which parishes were liable to contribute Statute
Labour, and in what proportion, and how the Statute Labour was to
be distributed between the turnpike road and the other highways
1 Sir J. C. Hippisley, Bart., M.P., to Sir John Sinclair, 4th April 1808 ; in
Second Report of House of Commons Committee on Highways, Appendix A,
p. 136.
2 Loidis and Elmete, by T. D. Whitaker, 1816, p. 82.
170 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
of each parish. Quarter Sessions could require the Trust to
erect "weighing engines." * If the Trustees chose to allow more
than the statutory maximum number of horses to be used on
steep hills, their order was subject to the confirmation of Quarter
Sessions ; 2 if they put up any toll-gates not authorised by their
Act, the Justices in Quarter Sessions were summarily to order
the Sheriff to remove them. 3 But from about the middle of the
eighteenth century, we see the Turnpike Trusts shaking them-
selves gradually free from any control by the Rulers of the
County over their administration, or over the expenditure of
their funds. Their powers are from decade to decade con-
stantly increased. They are authorised to exact additional
tolls for heavy weights, to erect weighing machines, to seize
horses in excess of the lawful number, to charge double rates
for narrow wheels and altogether to exempt from toll the broadest
wheels. It was by successive statutory provisions of this kind,
obtained first by one Turnpike Trust and then by another,
increasing at each renewal of the term, rather than by any
deliberate policy of Parliament, that the Trusts and their
officers obtained, as the century wore on, such far-reaching and
uncontrolled powers. What is remarkable is the long-continued
failure of the House of Commons, unaided by any intervention
of the Cabinet or any Government Department, to view the
problem as a whole.
Across this mass of Local Acts, each applicable only to a few
miles of road, there came, between 1727 and 1766, half a score
of general statutes for the " more effectual preservation " of
the turnpike roads. 4 Two of the earliest of these were directed
1 13 George III. c. 84, sec. 7.
2 Ibid. sec. 18. 3 Ibid. sec. 51.
4 The general statutes relating to turnpike mads, prior to the consolidating
Acts of L766 and 1773, were 1 George II. c. 19 (1727); 5 George II. c. 3:5
(1731); S George II. c. 20 (1734) ; 14 George II. c. 42 ( 1 740) ; 21 George II.
c.28(1747); 21 George II. c. 43(1760); 26 George ILc 30 (1753); 28 George II.
c. 17 (1755); 30 George II. c. 27 (1757); 30 George II. c. 43 (1757). The
Act imposing tin- penalty of death for destruction <>f turnpike property was
that, nf 1734. These statutes, together with the consolidating Acts of 1 T t v * "■
and 1773, were made the subject, of an able and instructive commentary by
John Scott, in his Digests of the General Highway and Turnpike Lotos, 1778,
from which 1 1 1 < - quotations in the text, ait- taken (pp. 277. 265 and 259):
also i lions mi ilh General Highway a ml Turnpike Ads /Hissed in the
Hi Tear of III* Present Majesty, by Thomas Butterworth Bayloy. 1773..
Among other manuals we may cite The Laws respecting Highways and Turnpike
Roads, by James Barry Bird, 1801. The 1773 Act, together with fifteen sub-
THE REGULATION OF WHEELS 171
against the " ill-designing and disorderly persons [who] associated
themselves together both by day and night, and cut down,
pulled down, burnt and otherwise destroyed several turnpike
gates and houses " — the alarming frequency of this offence
between 1726 and 1734 inducing an eighteenth-century legislature
to raise the sentence, from three months hard labour and a public
whipping, to death without benefit of clergy. But the County
Justices and Turnpike Trustees who swarmed on the benches of
the House of Commons discovered more insidious enemies of
their turnpikes than mere rioters ; and from 1741 onward we see
them passing Act after Act to protect their roads against the
wear and tear of heavy weights and narrow wheels. These Acts
gave all bodies of Turnpike Trustees power to erect weighing
machines, to exact prohibitive tolls for extraordinary weights, to
seize horses in excess of the lawful number, to charge double
rates for narrow wheels, and altogether to exempt the broadest
wheels from their tolls. To quote the words of an able com-
mentator, the users of wheeled vehicles were to be " in some
instances compelled to obedience, like slaves, by severe penalties ;
and in others enticed to it like children with a sugar plum." Un-
fortunately for all concerned these amateur " Act-constructors,"
as John Scott terms them, were as unskilful as they were irresolute.
'' Sometimes one is at a loss to conceive the end at which they
were aiming," continues Scott ; " and sometimes when their
end is obvious one can find no reason for their choice of the
means that are designed to accomplish it." "If the Parliament
would but fix on any one reasonable plan," the farmers remarked
to Scott, " and keep to it, let it be what it might, they should be
satisfied ; but that such perpetual alterations as they had for
some time experienced, were inconvenient beyond expression,
for they never knew what they had to do for two years together."
At the conclusion of peace in 1763, after the Seven Years' War,
sequent statutes of 1774 (4), 1776 (2), 1777, 1778 (2), 1781, 1785, 1812, 1813,
1815 and 1817, were repealed and re-enacted by 3 George IV. c. 126 (1822) ;
see The General Turnpike Road Act, by Joseph Bateman, 1822 ; A Supplement
to the General Turnpike Road Act of 3 George IV. c. 126, by the same, 1823 ;
and A Second Supplement, by the same, 1827 ; The Law of Turnpikes, by
William Cobbett, junior, 1824 ; The General Turnpike Act, by William Knight
Dehany, 1823 ; The Law relating to Highways, Turnpike Roads, Public Bridges
and Navigable Rivers, by John Egremont, vol. i. only, 1830 ; and, as to the
muddle, An Argument for more of the Division of Labour in Civil Life in this
Country, by William Wickens, 1829, pp. 67-73.
172 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
the chaos of statutes had become so intolerable that a public-
spirited knot of local government reformers, headed by the well-
known Thomas Gilbert, set themselves to consolidate the whole
of the general law relating to turnpikes — an arduous and com-
plicated enterprise which, after an unsatisfactory essay in 1766
(7 George III. c. 40), eventuated in the comprehensive General
Turnpike Act of 1773 (13 George III. c. 84).
This Act, which was made to apply to all turnpike roads,
existing or thereafter constructed, was, like the legislation which
it superseded, framed rather in the interest of the Turnpike
Trustees and the mortgagees of their tolls than in that of the
users of the roads or the public at large. It was, indeed, in the
main, merely a consolidating Act. In so far as it altered the
powers of Turnpike Trustees, it strengthened their control over
their own officials, and enlarged the authority of these officials
over the community. To strengthen the position of the Trusts —
possibly with a view to improving their credit as borrowers — it
included the old clauses requiring a high property qualification
for Trustees, and disqualifying publicans from serving as officials,
whilst incorporating new provisions formalising their procedure,
and making it incumbent on them, whenever they leased the tolls,
to lease them to the highest bidder. But the obvious defects in
the Local Acts that we have already pointed out were not
remedied. No provision was made to prevent malversation oi
extravagance by the Turnpike Trustees ; there was required no
audit of their accounts ; no check was imposed on the amount of
their borrowings, or the rate of interest to be paid ; and no curl)
was placed on their uncontrolled power to divert, alter or close
the ancient highways at their will. The bulk of this wordy,
complicated and badly arranged statute consisted, in fact, in a
mere stringing together of the existing clauses relating to wheeled
vehicles — prohibitions, exemptions, special tolls, fines and for-
feitures, one piled on top of another until, as John Scott heard
" a very respectable and intelligent gentleman now in the House
fof Commons] observe, . . . the Trustees would have enough to
do if they were bound to reconcile all the contradictions of the
Act and make sense of its nonsense." It was this statute that,
with only trifling modifications, remained the basis of turnpike
administration right down to 1822, when it was superseded by
another hardly less complicated.
THE RENEWAL BILLS 173
The optimistic assumption of Parliament that the turnpike
and its toll would be but a temporary device to meet an excep-
tionally ruinous state of a particular bit of road was, we need
hardly say, everywhere falsified. Whenever the term for which
Parliament had granted a toll drew near to expiry, the particular
turnpike authority invariably petitioned for a renewal of its
Act. The power to take toll, it was alleged, had " been of great
benefit to all carriages and persons travelling those roads ; the
said roads are not fully repaired, nor all the moneys borrowed
by virtue of the said Act paid " ; " sometimes the deep and long
commons over which the roads went were so impassable " as to
require the construction of a causeway or other new work.
After a while the application for renewal becomes so much a
matter of course that no special reason is alleged for it, and the
new bill " for enlarging and continuing " the powers of each
Turnpike Trust appears automatically as the term comes to an
end. And these renewal bills generally included new powers,
either in the form of a schedule of augmented tolls, or by extension
to additional lengths of roads, or through the concession of more
drastic means of enforcing payment. In the first half of the
century, these steadily extending powers of taxation did not fail
to arouse complaints from those who had hitherto used the roads
free from toll. As the number of turnpike bills increases, the
applications to the House of Commons are met by counter-
petitions from groups of users alleging, as in the case of the fisher-
men of Hastings, that the proposed tolls will " discourage them
from following their employment," and will " impoverish the
greatest part of the inhabitants," or, as in the case of inhabitants
of Gloucestershire, declaring that the highways remain, in spite
of the toll, "in a ruinous and almost impassable condition,"
so that they see no benefit in a renewal of the impost. 1 The third
decade of the century, which is noted as a period of expansion
and active experiment in the administration of the Poor Law,
was marked also by a rapid multiplication of Turnpike Trusts.
Between 1720 and 1730 no fewer than 71 new Trusts were estab-
lished, the total mileage under toll being thereby more than
trebled. This great extension of taxation on the users of the
1 The quotations from petitions for and against Turnpike Bills are from
the House of Commons Journals (8th January 1707, 24th January 1709,
20th December 1709, and 3rd February 1710).
174 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
roads did not fail to arouse resistance, especially in districts
where small holdings or cottage manufacturers prevailed. Serious
riots broke out in Somerset, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire
in 1726, and continued spasmodically for a whole decade, in
the course of which turnpikes were destroyed, and the pike-
keepers ill-treated. " Great numbers of riotous and rebellious
persons," we read, in 1732, " armed with firearms and other
dangerous weapons have . . . frequently assembled themselves
together in the night-time, and marched in formidable bodies
into that City [Hereford] and pulled down and destroyed the
turnpikes erected on the roads leading thereto, and the houses
of the said turnpike keepers . . . after they had plundered the
same, and fired their guns into the windows of several other
dwelling houses and in the public streets . . . threatened and
declared that they would not only destroy the turnpikes but
would murder the keepers thereof, and all such Trustees who
should presume to act under the Act of Parliament ; and at the
public market place . . . have given notice in a most audacious
manner that if the magistrates or any other persons should
interrupt or oppose them, they would set the said City on fire."
Similar riots broke out at Bristol in 1749, in which turnpikes
were tumultuously demolished. The rioters were " armed with
rusty swords, pitchforks, axes, guns, pistols, clubs, etc., and
called themselves Sack a Lents. . . . They ranged themselves
in the main street before the George Inn, by beat of drum, huzzas
and a hunting horn, three drums attending them. Here they
drank freely, with much noise, and then broke the windows of
one Mr. Durbin, Tithingman of the Hundred who had, by order
of the [Turnpike] Commissioners, carried persons concerned in
destroying the turnpikes before two Justices, by whom they wore
committed to Newgate." After the disorder had lasted a fort-
night, the rioters were dispersed by the arrival of the soldiers.
A few years later there were turnpike riots at Leeds, in
which the military had to fire on the rioters, with some loss of
life. 1
1 For the successful turnpike riots .it Kingswood in ITl'7. sec the letter
from the Mayor <>f Bristol, 28th June 1727, in Home Office archives in Public
Record Office (Calendar <>f State Papers, Domestic), and Oldmixon's History
of England, 1735, p. 804; for those at Hereford, sec Read's Weekly Journal,
i_'-~)i h November I7:!l\ and Souse <>f Commons Journals, 2nd and Jxth March
for an armed attack on the turnpike at Cainscross, near Stroud, on
!Hli July 17:.!.'!. Bee Epme Dttice archives in Public Record Office (Calendar of
MULTIPLICATION OF THE TRUSTS 175
About the middle of the century, in spite of the annually-
increasing mileage of road subjected to toll, and the automatic
renewal and extension of the powers of the various bodies of
Turnpike Trustees, opposition, either by petition or riot, dies
away, and Turnpike Acts multiply fast. 1 After the Peace of
1748 a perfect mania seems to set in, and the number of new
Trusts rises suddenly from about three a year to nearly twenty
a year. Between 1748 and 1770 the number of separate Trusts
in existence rose from about 160 to about 530, whilst the mileage
subject to toll was quadrupled. When we remember the
eighteenth century impatience of new taxation and hatred of
restraints on personal freedom, this acquiescence in the extension,
all over England, of an entirely new impost, is, we think, a matter
for surprise. We attribute it less to a conviction in the payers
of the toll that they were actually getting quid pro quo, than to
certain common features in the constitution and working of the
State Papers, Domestic, vol. 32, No. 64) ; compare also the account of those
at Ledbury in 1735 in petition of Ledbury Turnpike Trustees (ibid.), and in
Daily Gazetteer for 8th October and 9th December 1735, given in The Law of
Highways, by W. C. Glen, 1865, pp. 53-55. A letter to the Duke of Chandos,
8th January 1737, describes the forcible demolition of the turnpike at Wilton
by an armed band disguised by white smocks over their clothes (Home Office
archives in Public -Record Office ; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, vol. 40,
No. 1). For the riots at Bristol in 1734 and 1749, see Annals of Bristol in the
Eighteenth Century, by J. Latimer, p. 157, and Gentleman 's Magazine, August
1749, p. 276 ; for that at Leeds in 1753, Loidis and Elmete, by T. D. Whitaker,
1816, p. 77.
1 From the earliest three Turnpike Trusts of 1706-1710, the number rose at
first slowly. The third decade of the eighteenth century — noted also, as we
shall hereafter show, for great developments in Poor Law administration —
saw no fewer than 71 new Trusts established, the mileage being trebled. By
1748 the number had grown to 160. After the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle — still
more after the conclusion of the Seven Years' War in 1763 — when the nation
advanced rapidly in all sorts of internal improvement, Turnpike Trusts multi-
plied on all sides, the number rising, between 1748 and 1770, to 530, and the
mileage being quadrupled. The remainder of the century saw a steady in-
crease, the number and mileage again doubling in thirty years ; reaching, in
1838, 1116, having 22,000 miles of road. As each Trust had to get a new
Act every fifteen or twenty-one years, the number of Turnpike Acts reached
more than three times these figures. Between 1760 and 1774 they were passed
at the rate of thirty a year ; between 1785 and 1809 at the rate of forty a year.
By 1838 no fewer than 3800 separate Turnpike Acts had been put on the
statute book (History of Private Bill Legislation, by F. Clifford, 1885-1887, vol. ii.
p. 18, etc. ; Report of Royal Commission on Roads, 1840 ; Report of House
of Commons Committee on Turnpike Trusts, 1839 ; Journal of the Royal
Statistical Society, 1839). In The Development of Transportation in Modern
England, by W. T. Jackman, 1916, p. 743, a table is given showing the Road
Acts passed in 1701-1750, 1751-1770, 1771-1790, 1791-1810, and 1811-1830
respectively.
176 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
various Turnpike Trusts themselves. It must, in the first place,
be remembered that the tolls were never levied on foot passengers,
and were thus unfelt by the labouring poor. The projectors of
each new Turnpike Trust were so anxious to secure local support
that they included among their proposed Trustees every one of
local influence or authority — noblemen, clergy, squires, farmers
and even traders — a constitution of the governing body which,
at whatever cost of efficiency, at any rate went far to secure
assent. But it was not merely the principal inhabitants who
were placated. The new source of road revenue promised to
relieve the parishioners of their ancient Statute Labour. The
little farmers and cottagers looked forward to the cost of repairs
being henceforth met out of the tolls to be paid by the carriage
folk and the London carriers. " As soon as a turnpike Act is
obtained," it was said in 1754, 1 " all the parishes through which
the road passes consider the Act as a benefit ticket, and an
exemption from their usual expenses, and elude the payment of
their just quota towards the reparation of the road, by com-
pounding with the Trustees for a less sum, or by doing their
Statute Labour in a fraudulent manner ; and in both these
cases they are generally favoured by the neighbouring Justices and
gentlemen, for the ease of their own estates." Hence the very
defects in structure and function of the Turnpike Trusts served
to prevent resistance to the new impost which they levied.
From the standpoint of a national system of road communica-
tion, the Turnpike Trusts had, from first to last, many grave
defects. Foreign critics complained that, instead of the main
routes of through traffic, from one end of the kingdom to another,
being systematically dealt with, the abandonment of the subject
by the English Parliament to a local initiative and local public
spirit resulted, at best, in a strange patchwork. Whether or not
a particular bit of road remained in the ruinous and impassable
condition implied by parish management depended, not on the
needs of the users, or the national importance of this particular
link, but on the degree of enlightened self-interest or public
spirit of the squires, farmers, and traders in its immediate neigh-
bourhood. 2 If, during the eighteenth century, any one had
1 Gentleman * Magazine, September 1754, p. 395.
: "The system," said a writer of 1834, "is radically bad, being based on
principles in the highest degree objectionable chiefly as respects the manage-
THE TURNPIKE PATCHWORK i 77
taken the trouble to make a turnpike map of England, this
would have shown, not a system of radiating arteries of com-
munication, but scattered cases of turnpike administration,
unconnected with each other ; appearing at first as mere dots
on the map, then gradually increasing in number and size so as
to form continuous lines ; and only by the end of the century
becoming, as John Holt somewhat optimistically declared in
1794, " so multiplied and extended as to form almost an universal
plan of communication through the kingdom." 1 It took, in
fact, practically a whole century of disconnected effort before
even such national arteries of communication as the Great North
Road from London to Edinburgh, the Irish road from London to
Holyhead, or the Great Western Road from London to Exeter
came, for the whole of their lengths, under the administration
of Turnpike Trusts. The travellers from Glasgow to London
in 1739 found " no turnpike road till they came to Grantham,
within 1 10 miles of London." A foreign visitor in 1752, travelling
on the Great Western Road, declares that " after the first 47
miles from London, you never set eye on a turnpike for 220
miles. . . . What fine roads," he exclaims satirically, " from
London to Land's End, or even to Exeter, Plymouth or Fal-
mouth ; you have such roads as the lazy Italians have fruits,
namely, what God left them after the Flood." 2 And yet, as
another traveller observes, " there may be a profusion of too
many turnpikes round a single city, half of which carried on
iuent and superintendence of roads. There is in fact no general system of
manageinent or superintendence. The system is much the same as if we were
in a great town to put the management of each street under the sole direction
and control of a selection of persons located in each street, irresponsible to
the general body and naturally careful of their own private local interests
alone, without regard to the general interests of the township, or any portion
other than that in which they saw and felt a direct personal interest " (A
Treatise on Internal Intercourse and Communication in Civilized States and
Particularly in Great Britain, by Thomas Grahame, 1834, p. 19).
1 This optimistic statement of John Holt is in his General View of the
Agriculture of Lancashire, 1794. It was quoted in Second Report of House of
Commons Committee on Highways, 1808, Appendix 7 a, p. 183.
2 For the condition of the Glasgow to London road in 1739, see Dr. Banna-
tyne's scrapbook, quoted from in Cleland's Statistical Account of Glasgow ;
Penny Magazine, 16th March 1833; Place MSS. 27828-10. For the foreigner's
account of the road from London to Land's End, see Gentleman's Magazine,
November 1752. Two years later, another correspondent stated that, out
of the 172 miles to Exeter, there are " no turnpikes more than 40 miles
from London, except . . . people go round by Bath or Wells " (ibid. August
1754).
N
178 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
in a straight line would have proved a national rather than a
private good." x For even in those districts in which Turnpike
Trusts had been established, there was no security, or even
likelihood, that the most frequented, the most direct and the
easiest right of way would be selected for improvement. The
Commissioners employed by the Board of Agriculture in 1794
are continually remarking on the " malignant degree of in-
genuity . . . displayed in sending them [i.e. the turnpike roads]
up hills," or " over such a dreary, dangerous and hilly common." 2
The motives for this inconsiderate choice of routes were varied
and diverse. The old pack-horse track, which went up hill and
down dale wherever the surface was good enough, was often
converted into a carriage road without regard for the fact that
its gradients made it a quite unsuitable route for wheeled traffic.
The first waggon highways were, moreover, as a House of
Commons Committee was informed in 1806, sometimes deliber-
ately " carried up steep ascents to gain the open country and
avoid the valleys, because the roads through the latter could not
easily be made passable in the wet seasons of the year." 3 More
sinister motives were found in the " partiality " and " selfish-
ness " of individual landowners, who sought, it was complained
in the Gentleman's Magazine in August 1754, " to make turnpikes
avenues, more or less, to this or that country seat." " If the
great man," it was said in 1794, " who generally takes the lead
in laying out the turnpike road has no immediate interest himself.
he has often a friend to oblige, or an enemy to mortify, by sending
the road up hill to save the land of one, or through the middle of
a meadow to hurt the other. A tippling house on the top of a hill,
or a favourite piece of land at the bottom, compels the husband-
man at this day, in many parts of this kingdom, to keep one-third
more cattle in his team than there would otherwise have been
1 Gentleman's Magazine, August 1752.
- For the opinion of the Commissioners employed by the Board <>f Agri-
culture in IT'.M, mc. for instance, General Vine of the Agriculture of Hereford,
by .l"im ci.uk, 1794, p. ">1 : General View of the Agriculture <;/' Northumberland,
by John Bailey and George Culley, 17!M, p. 66 : General View oftht Agriculture
of Durham, by John Granger, 1794, p. 20. " Sad . . . plans and sections,"
sums u 1 1 Tin nnas Butterworth Baj ley, " been sent with tnepetitio] Darn-
pike Ad daring the las! to or 20 years, Parliament would not have Bancti
the enormous waste of public money in carrying on the schemes of ignorant
ictors <>r interested individuals."
: ' Second Report from the Souse of Commons Committee on Broad Wheel
I se<;. ,.. 12.
THE LACK OF TURNPIKES 179
occasion for." 1 Even as late as 1828, when the efficacy of public
opinion had enormously increased, we see no less a personage
than Sir Robert Peel, the elder, not scrupling to attempt to
divert the new turnpike road between London and Liverpool
out of its way, in order that it might pass close to his own residence
and cotton-mills, to the ruin of the town of Tamworth — an
attempt frustrated by counter-petitions from Tamworth and,
most potent of all, an able letter to the Times? Nor was it
always powerful individuals who perverted the action of Turnpike
Trustees. The whole of the inhabitants of particular towns
frequently asserted their separate interests to the detriment of a
national service. " Local interest," said John Scott in 1778,
" often produces strange distortions. A few years ago a new
turnpike road was made from St. Alban's to Reading . . .
designed to open an easy communication between the East and
West of England, and had the straight line been preserved,
would have been many miles nearer than the way through
London. It was, however, found necessary to make a zigzag
line by Watford, Amersham, High Wycombe and Marlow, solely
to oblige the inhabitants of those towns, by which means the
difference between the two roads is rendered inconsiderable." 3
In other cases the reverse would happen, and a powerful corpora-
tion would try to prevent the new impost being levied on its
own inhabitants. ' The town of Liverpool," it was reported,
: ' is a great enemy to turnpikes : there are only three toll-gates
within eight miles of it, none within four." The result was that
the road revenue was so much lessened that the Turnpike Trustees
found themselves unable to keep any part of the roads in good
repair. " Most of the great towns " of Lancashire, it was said
in 1794, " have had sufficient interest to place the toll-bars at
some miles distance from them " ; and this, it was alleged, was
1 General View of the Agriculture of Hereford, by John Clark, 1794, p. 53.
2 As to the Tamworth case, see Times of 31st May and 16th June 1828,
which explains that " It so happens . . . that the residence of Sir Robert Peel
is distant from Tamworth about 2 miles and immediately adjacent to his
cotton and spinning factories at Fazeley, a village almost exclusively Sir Robert's
own property, with a population consisting of his artizans. Under these
circumstances Sir Robert has been using his powerful interest to exclude
Tamworth in order to bring the road through Fazeley, and the proposed line
is now changed accordingly, by which Tamworth will be entirely ruined."
3 Digests of the General Highway and Turityike Laws, by John Scott, 1778,
p. 317.
180 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
" almost the sole cause of the wretched condition of the turnpike
roads " in that county as late as 1808. 1
The narrow limits of each Trust, and the pecuniary interests
involved, not only militated against the wisest choice of a route,
but also obstructed the further increase of lines of communica-
tion. " Instead of Turnpike Acts being obtained for particular
roads," wrote an able critic of road administration, in 1765, 2
' they ought to have been made general throughout counties.
As things are at present conducted, the Commissioners of particu-
lar roads, in order to enhance their revenues, generally take the
liberty of blocking up the principal avenues of every other road
which falls into or leads across theirs ... so that, in fact, every
Act which passes for the repair of a road, with the usual extensive
powers to Commissioners to erect gates, is an Act also to prevent
any of the roads leading into or across it, be they ever so bad,
from receiving the same remedy." The Turnpike Trustees
went, however, further in their obstructiveness. Towards the
latter part of the eighteenth century, when the several oases
of turnpike administration were impinging on each other, the
Trustees of every existing Trust, in conjunction often with their
mortgagees or other creditors, were quick to petition Parliament
against any proposals for new turnpike roads which threatened
to compete with their line of route. Thus, in 1780, when a new
road was projected from Horsley to Dudbridge in Gloucestershire,
the Trustees of the Gloucester and Stroud Turnpike complained
loudly to the House of Commons that this new road would " open
up a communication of road from Gloucester to Dudbridge,
and through the parishes of Standish and Stonehouse, by which
1 The exempted areas of Lancashire are described in the General View of the
Agriculture of Lancashire, by John Holt, 1794, and in the Second Report of
1 1 "use of Commons Committee on Highways, 1808, Appendix A, p. 182.
Another case may be cited from Yorkshire. When in 1802 the trustees of a
nil ain twenty miles of the Great North Road in the North Riding got their
Act, the in habit ants of the two little villages of Thirsk and Yarm, which formed
the terminal points, secured clauses inserted forbidding the erection of toll-
gates within four miles of each place. The result was that all local traffic
was able to use eight out of the twenty miles free of toll, and cunning travellers
managed even to get free of the toll on the other twelve, by using slightly
longer parallel bye-lanes (Statement concerning the Thirsk and Yarm Road, by
the Committee <>f Trustees, etc., Stockton, 1823). See also the pamphlets for
and against the establishment of a Turnpike Trust for the road between Keighley
and Kendal, in the British Museum volume, 213, i. 2.
- An Inquiry into tin- Mm/is of Preserving and Improving the. Public Roads,
by Rev. Henry Homer, 1705, pp. 21-22.
RIVAL LINES OF ROUTE 181
means," it was said, the traveller from Gloucester to Bath would
be able to go more quickly and easily, " as by the intended road
several steep hills would be avoided." If the bill passes, they
ask that their own tolls may be increased. The Trustees of the
Cirencester and Stroud Turnpike go further, and demand the
entire rejection of the project. 1 So, in the same year, the Trustees
of Newcastle-under-Lyme and Macclesfield Turnpike petition
vehemently against a projected extension of the territory of the
Macclesfield and Buxton Trust, as the proposed improvement
of certain branch roads " will materially interfere with the
petitioners' trust, as they will be a means of lessening the tolls."
In the very middle of the eighteenth century there seems to have
been a pitched battle in Parliament — reminding us of similar
railway struggles a century later — as to the direction to be taken
by the main line of road from London to the North- Western
Counties. We see Sheffield and Derby petitioning in favour of
rival projects, via Leicester and via Bedford respectively, and
enlisting, each of them, the support of wayside parishes. Out
of many similar petitions we quote the following in 1800. The
Trustees of the Maidenhead and Reading Turnpike, having under
their charge part of the Great Western Road, strongly oppose a
projected new turnpike road from New Windsor to Longford
in Middlesex, because it would make the road from London by
that way considerably shorter, which might tempt the traveller
to avoid Maidenhead altogether. If we remember that the
Trustees, mortgagees and creditors of an existing turnpike road
would certainly include the county members, the resident Justices
of the Peace, the local landowners, and the more substantial
farmers of the neighbourhood, we shall be able to estimate how
effective was the obstruction to the Parliamentary sanction, or
even to the initiation, of a shorter or easier line of communication
than that to which the inhabitants were accustomed.
1 For the petitions against the new Horsley to Dudbridge road, see House
of Commons Journals, 25th and 28th January 1780. A new road, admittedly
advantageous, might even be opposed by a rival trader. In 17G0 there was
a petition presented against a new Turnpike Bill by an individual Derbyshire
coalowner on the plea that the new road would " give such advantage to the
proprietors of the collieries " near it as to be detrimental to his trade (House
of Commons Journals, 22nd February 1760). For the petition against the
Macclesfield and Buxton Turnpike Trust Bill, see ibid. 21st February 1780.
For the struggles between the rival roads between London and the North, see
ibid. January and February 1750. For that in protection of Maidenhead, see
ibid. 9th June 1800.
i82 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
We may here notice the somewhat analogous development of
toll bridges. The privilege of levying bridge toll, or " pontage,"
had been conceded by the King in special cases, notably during
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, by way of indemnity
for erecting particular bridges ; but such a grant was, we under-
stand, always limited in duration to three, five or eight years.
Except for such cases, the bridges that existed seem to have
been free from toll. In Lancashire in 1621, and again in Essex
in 1746, we hear of attempts by neighbouring landowners to
exact tolls, which are repressed by Quarter Sessions. In the
eighteenth century, however, under the influence of the imperative
demand for better means of communication, and of the new idea
that the actual users of the highways should be made to bear the
expense of their maintenance, we see erected, from 1725 onward,
a whole series of new toll bridges, corresponding with the new
turnpike tolls. Such a levy of tolls required statutory authority,
which was granted by Local Act, sometimes (as in the cases of the
City of London, Bristol, Norwich, Windsor and other corporate
towns) to the Municipal Corporation ; sometimes (as in the
cases of Westminster and Putney Bridges, Preston Bridge,
Dcritend Bridge at Birmingham and Bishopwearmouth Bridge
at Sunderland) to public bodies of Commissioners incorporated
for the purpose ; and sometimes (as in the cases of the bridges
at Walton on Thames, Hampton Court and several of those
within the Metropolis) to individual landowners or groups of
speculators. These Corporations, Commissioners or Companies
differed from the Turnpike Trusts in securing powers unlimited
in duration, and in levying tolls on pedestrians. They seem to
have resembled the Turnpike Trusts in the general inefficient v
of their administration, in the frequent farming of their tolls.
in the complications and extortions of the imposts that they
levied on vehicular and animal traffic, and in the delays to
which, in London at any rate, the congestion at their toll-gates
eventually gave rise. 1
1 As to 1. ridges, sec chap. vi. of The Story of the King's Highway, pp. So-112.
For cases of the <_' ra 1 1 1 of "pontage" during the fourteenth century, see the
references to the Parliament Rolls iii History of Private Bill Legislation, by
I". Clifford, 1887, vol. i. pp. i2~)-35. It was in iG21 that the Lancashire Qv
Sessions was seeking to suppress the exaction of tolls on County Bridges.
" The Justices here present are of opinion that if any toll or stellate he taken
for the carriage over Crosford Bridge or any other bridge repaired by i\w
common charge of i he ( lounty the same is extortion, ami ought not to bs taken
TOLL BRIDGES 183
When we consider the administration of the various Turnpike
Trusts of the eighteenth century, from the narrower standpoint
of the repair and construction of particular bits of road, we find
ourselves in the midst of the haphazard and anarchic diversities
characteristic of an age lacking alike in technological and adminis-
trative science. The County Justices in Quarter Sessions, who,
as we have seen, controlled the earliest of the turnpike roads,
sometimes appointed an officer at a small fee to lay out the pro-
ceeds of the toll as he thought fit ; or, in other cases, contented
themselves with ordering the Treasurer of the moneys arising
from particular turnpikes to pay lump sums to the Parish Sur-
veyors of Highways " after the said Surveyors have made it
appear . . . that the inhabitants of the said parish have done
their full six days work, pursuant to the statute, of teams and
labourers, and have expended a sixpenny rate in repairing their
highways." Occasionally Quarter Sessions would request the
Justices to " view the roads in their several Divisions and to
or paid, and that the takers thereof shall be dealt with withall by indictment
of extortion quo warranto or otherwise as the law will warrant, yet nevertheless
all bridges shall be repaired by the charge of Counties and Hundreds as formerly
they have been accustomed " (Manchester Sessions Notes of Proceedings, 1616-
1623, edited by Ernest Axon, 1901, p. 142). More than a century later, the
Essex Quarter Sessions had expressly to require the " owners of any bridge
or bridges built over any river or stream running across any highways . . .
immediately (to) take or cause to be taken the chain or chains from off the
same " (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Essex, 15th July 1746).
Among the Local Acts authorising toll bridges to be built by Municipal
Corporations may be mentioned those of Norwich (1726), Windsor (1735),
London (1756, 1758, 1762, 1767, etc.), Maidenhead (1772). Special bodies of
commissioners were incorporated by Local Acts for the purpose of building
and maintaining Westminster Bridge (1741, 1744, 1745) ; Putney Bridge
(1725); Preston Bridge (1750); Deritend Bridge at Birmingham (1788, 1792,
1S13 and 1822 ; see Old and New Birmingham, by R. K. Dent, pp. 421-422 ;
A Century of Birmingham Life, by J. A. Langford, pp. 68-71) ; Bishopwear-
mouth Bridge at Sunderland (1792, 1814). Sometimes bodies of Police or
Improvement Commissioners received such powers, as for the bridge over the
Thames at Windsor (9 George I. c. 15) ; and for that over the Severn at Evesham
(5 George IV. c. 67). To these must be added the Local Acts obtained by
landowners or private speculators, such as those for bridges at Walton-on-
Thames (20 George II. c. 22, 1746) and Hampton Court (23 George II. c. 37,
1749), and those relating to the various toll bridges built by joint-stock com-
panies in the Metropolis (Report of House of Commons Committees on Metro-
politan Bridges, 1854, 1876, 1877 and 1881). The most valuable toll bridge,
still existing as private property, is probably that of Lord St. Levan, con-
necting Plymouth with Devonport, and yielding a revenue of many thousands
a year. As long ago as 1800 the tolls were rented from year to year at the
" immense sum of £2500 " {The Plymouth Dock Guide, 1800, p. 28 ; A View of
Plymozdh Dock, 1812, p. 53).
184 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
cause the Surveyor to measure such parts of the roads as are out
of repair, and to report at the next Quarter Sessions." x But we
do not gather that, for the first half of the century at any rate,
Quarter Sessions, where it was responsible for a turnpike road,
gave any directions, either to its own officer or to the parish
Surveyors of Highways, as to the way in which the work was to
be done. Some of the early bodies of Turnpike Trustees seem
to have shown rather more activity, if less discretion, than the
County Justices. The active Trustees, often, as we gather, the
farmers and tradesmen of the neighbourhood, added petty
jobbery and a foolish officiousness to their ignorance. Nor were
the proceedings made any better by the intervention of the
ordinary eighteenth-century squire. " We may blame," says
a graphic but inelegant critic in the Gentleman's Magazine for
August 1754, " the ignorance and obstinacy of John Trot, and
reflect on Tom Buttertub, the grocer, the booby Trustee of the
next parish ; of course the profile of the road is injudiciously
constructed. . . . John Trot is not so much the object of con-
tempt for being an incorrigible blockhead, as Squire Satskull and
Sir John Shallow are, for their pride, avarice, insolence, ignorance,
petulancy and meanness. . . . This meanness in our gentry
brings it about that a tenant shall be employed in repairing the
road upon his own terms, and the more he cheats the [turn]pike,
the better he will be able to pay his rent. The squire likes his
proposals, and the rest of the Commissioners acquiesce, being
either farmers or tradesmen. . . . We cannot justly wonder that
turnpike roads should be in such bad condition as they are,
when we find such meanness amongst those who ought to be
examples of public spirit and virtue." " At the first erection
of turnpikes," reports another critic in the same journal for
September 1754, " the road-makers ex professo, who perhaps
1 The examples of the Justices' action are taken from the minutes of Quarter
Sessions, Essex, 1704-1775. In 1704 "it is ordered that Mr L. and Mr. E. A.
of Coxford in this County are hereby appointed Surveyors for t he road lying
between Kelvedon and Strennaway, commonly called Domsey Road, for one
whole year, and . . . that all the moneys now in the hands of . . . (the)
Receivers of the toll at the turnpike be by them paid unto the said Surveyors
and by them ... to be cmploj'ed and laid out in repairing Domsey Road "
(MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Essex, 26th April I7U4). For 15 Orders for
payments to as many parishes, see MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions. Essex,
5th October 1725. For the order to the Justices to view the roads in their
Divisions, ibid. 15th January 1722.
INEFFICIENT LABOUR 185
were yeomen-like farmers and gentlemen's bailiffs, made a very
poor figure in their undertaking ; witness, amongst others, that
great road from London to Bath ; it errs and blunders in all the
forms ; its strata of materials were never worth a straw ; its
surface was never made cycloidal ; it hath neither good side
ditches, nor footpaths for walkers ; no outlets were made for
water that stagnates in the body of the road ; it was never
sufficiently widened, nor were the hedges ever cleared — of course
it is the worst public road in Europe, considering what vast sums
have been collected from it." Other Turnpike Trusts shifted
the whole work and responsibility to their Treasurer, a gentleman
whose custody of the turnpike moneys brought him a small
profit, and who was therefore considered as remunerated for his
trouble.
We may note here the slowness and reluctance with which
the Turnpike Trustees, even more than other Local Authorities
of the eighteenth century, appointed any salaried officers or
even made use of the growing banking facilities. The Treasurer
was, almost invariably, one of the Trustees themselves, usually
a country gentleman, without any special knowledge of business,
or any great proficiency in bookkeeping. The Treasurer had
to get in the money either from the " pikemen," as they collected
it ; and, naturally, it was found easier to employ a contractor,
or toll-farmer, who could be required to pay over by regular
instalments the price that he had promised to pay for his privilege.
The Treasurer seems habitually to have mixed these sums of a
few hundreds up to a few thousands of pounds with his own
cash ; and to have paid out such expenditure on behalf of the
Trust as had been authorised, or as he himself decided. Efficient
audit there was none ; but periodically, after long delay, the
Treasurer would produce accounts to his brother-Trustees —
sometimes only on the occasion of a change of Treasurer — when
the balance in hand might be transferred. In the meantime
it was thought quite in order that the Treasurer should make
for himself whatever profit he could, by thrifty investment of
the floating balance. We may understand the reluctance of
the Trustees, in their corporate capacity, to entrust their funds
to the private bankers of the period. It is less easy to appreciate
the simplicity with which they allowed their Treasurer to play
with these public moneys for his own advantage. Under
186 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
such circumstances it was almost inevitable that many bodies of
Turnpike Trustees, especially in the latter half of the century,
should fall back on the common administrative expedient of the
period, that of " farming," which we have already described.
With such primitive views of administration, we can under-
stand how many of the earlier Turnpike Trusts hardly conduced
to the actual improvement of the roads. Thus, Robert Phillips,
in his dissertation of 1737 to the Royal Society, 1 " concerning the
present state of the high roads of England," complains that the
" turnpike roads, instead of being mended, have been made bad
by art ... so that all the money that has been laid out in such
roads . . . has been rather of prejudice than service." The
people who have had the care of the roads, he explains, have
heaped loamy gravel on them, deep hard-baked ruts have been
formed, which are constantly filled with water. ; ' If the turn-
pikes were taken down," he sums up, " and the roads not touched
for seven years, they would be a great deal better than they are
now." These haphazard methods of road maintenance con-
tinued to prevail in the smaller and more remote Turnpike Trusts
right into the nineteenth century. From about 1750, however,
we watch the larger and more important Trusts — those admin-
istered by active and intelligent Justices or by the principal
inhabitants of populous districts — enlisting in their service
permanent salaried officials who proceeded to experiment in
road construction and repair, without engineering knowledge,
it is true, but at any rate according to some deliberate policy,
which was consistently followed. The result was an amazing
variety of shapes and surfaces, each for a time believed in by its
inventor. 2 The " road laid wavy," or " trenched road," with a
1 Dissertation concerning the Present State of the High Roads of England,
especially those near London, by Robert Phillips, 1737, pp. 3, 4, 15.
2 As to the fantastic shapes of roads, see Digests of the Qt tu red Highway and
Turnpike Laws, by John Seott, 1778, p. 322. "Some roads in England . . .
arc laid wavy, or rising and falling, and men attend . . . after rain, to let out
the water with their spades " {Gentleman's Magazine, May 1719. p. 218). " In
level countries, where the roads are cut, these waves are absolutely U
. . . The first waving of the roads was began in Whitechapel on the E
Road," or else in Leicestershire. "The waves were then short and high, and
soon were found bo excessively inconvenient to the travellers, both on fool
and horseback and in carriages, that they were discarded. . . . The Hackney
riad . . . followed the waving method, but made the ascents and descents
longer" [ibid, November 17.V.)).
he angle in the pantile roof road," observes Scott, " is often I as
to endanger overturning on the least collision of carriages, and always em
FANTASTIC SHAPES 187
" continuation of little hills and valleys " ; the " angular road
sloping like a pantile roof from one hand to the other " ; the
: ' concave road," or " hollow way," into which a stream was
periodically turned to clean its surface ; the built-up " horizontal
road," flanked by deep ditches, sometimes a " causeway from
20 to 30 feet wide, nearly horizontal on the top, with precipices
on each side of four or five feet perpendicular depth," — could all
be seen within a day's journey of the Metropolis. Regarded in
the light of the modern art of road construction, all these fantastic
forms and surfaces were grotesquely inconvenient and wasteful.
But we may well believe that they were all of them improvements
on the deep holes and inevitable ruts which resulted from the
careless dumping of clay, dirt and rubbish by the little road-
farmer or the ignorant workman who carried out the orders of
the local Trustee. And the constant observation and comparison
of these deliberately shaped roads seems to have produced, by
the end of the century, something like a consensus of opinion,
among the more intelligent Trustees and Surveyors, in favour of
a moderately convex surface, artificially constructed of small
pebbles and gravel — an immeasurable improvement on both
the " natural " surface and the heaped-up dirt which it super-
seded. 1
to occasion anxiety to the timorous passenger " (Digests of the General High-
way and Turnpike Laws, by John Scott, 1778, p. 320). For the concave road
or hollow way, see Dissertation concerning the Stale of the High Roads of England,
by R. Phillips, 1737, p. 15. This is, we imagine, the " washway " referred to
in the Inquiry into the Means of Preserving and Improving the Public Roads,
by Rev. Henry Homer, 1765, p. 30. In such a road, " instead of the water
being thrown off, it is here made the repairing agent, by being conducted from
the sides to the centre, and from thence to the lowest part of the road, where
a side outlet is made for it ; in its course the water washes the whole surface,
carries off the mud, and leaves the road firm and clean " (C. M. Ward to Sir John
Sinclair in Report from House of Commons Committee on Broad Wheels and
Turnpike Roads, 1809). The wilful obstruction of any " water which, by
order of the Trustees or their Surveyor, shall bo reserved to run or be let in
upon any part of the said road " was often made punishable by fine and im-
prisonment (see, for instance, 17 George III. c. 20).
For the best opinion on road-making in 1778, see the admirable Appendix
" On the Construction and Preservation of Roads," in the Digests of the General
Highway and Turnpike Laws, by John Scott, 1778, pp. 313-352.
1 It may be here noted that it is to the turnpike roads that we owe the
general establishment of milestones, which (if we ignore those which were
placed by the Romans on their roads) date from about 1720. At first they
were put up voluntarily on a few roads. " At every mile from Grantham to
Stangate," says Defoe, " are stones set up by Mr. Boulton which he designed
to have carried on to London for the general benefit " (Tour through the whole
188 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
But the richer and larger turnpike authorities did more than
merely improve the surface of the roads. Here and there we
find them widening and straightening the narrow and crooked
bits of their thoroughfares ; bridging the numerous " water-
splashes " through which generations of travellers had passed ;
improving gradients by cutting through the hilltops and raising
the valley bottoms ; and, in the latter half of the century, con-
structing entirely new roads from place to place. Thus, as
early as 1708, we find an order made at the Hertfordshire
Quarter Sessions " for the widening by eight yards, of the high-
way from Ware to Wadesmill ... for the length of 25 poles,
and for a jury to be empanelled to assess reasonable compensation
not exceeding 25 years purchase." x In Essex, in 1725, the parish
of Chelmsford petitioned Quarter Sessions " to grant them some
supply towards the charges of purchasing and pulling down the
old houses in a row called Middle Row, and lay the ground into
the highway for enlarging thereof, it being but nine feet wide."
It was thereupon ordered by Quarter Sessions " that the sum
of £50, more and besides the sum of £100 given them last Sessions,
be given to the Churchwardens, Overseers and Surveyors of the
said Parish for the time being, after they have purchased and
Island of Great Britain, by Daniel Defoe, vol. iii. p. 28, edition of 1748). From
about 1744 most Turnpike Acts contain a clause (see, for instance, 17 George II.
c. 4, Chatham and Canterbury Turnpike Act, 1744) requiring the Trustees to
measure their road and set up stones or posts stating the distance. In 170(5
this requirement (including also those of direction posts at crossways and
" graduated posts or stones " where the road was subject to " deep or dangerous
floods ") was made universal by 7 George III. c. 40, sec. 30 (the General Turn-
pike Act, 1766), re-enacted by 13 George III. c. 84, sec. 41 (the General Turn-
pike Act, 1773). The "milestones" were sometimes wooden posts; those
of the Epping and Ongar Turnpike Trust in 1787 were to be of oak, 5 feet high
and 11 inches wide ; angular, with letters and figures on each side denoting
the distance from Epping and Chelmsford respectively (Minutes of the Epping
and Ongar Highway Trust, 1769-1870, by B. Winstone, 1891, p. 138).
The signpost is earlier than the milestone. Paul Eentzner, the German
traveller, was directed by a signpost in Kent in 1598 (Itincrarium Oermaniae,
<:<illine, Angliae, Italiae, by Paul Eentzner, 1612). In 1695 we read of Lanca-
shire, " they have one good thing the most parts of this County . . . that at
all cross ways there are posts with hands pointing to each road with the nanus
of the great town or market towns that it leads to " (Through England on a
Sidi Saddle . . . Diary of Celia Fiennes, edited by the Hon. Mrs. Griffiths,
1S8S, ]). 157). As early as 1697 the Justices in Special Highway Sessions were
authorised to require Surveyors of Highways to put up a "direction stone or
post " at " cross highways " (8 & 9 William III. c. 16).
1 Notes from the Hertfordshire County Records, p. 39; and MS. .Minutes.
Quarter Sessions, Essex, 5th October 1725; and Qenilemari'a Magazine, May
1753.
ROAD WIDENINGS 189
pulled down all the said houses and made a highway there."
But, as might have been expected, it was the Turnpike Trusts
in the distinctly urban districts that were most energetic in this
work of road improvement. The Trustees of the main road from
London into Kent had, about the middle of the century, " widened
several places in the road to Dartford, being," says the Gentleman's
Magazine for May 1753, " perhaps the first who began to widen
and make the roads straight." They " likewise widened and
mended some narrow and bad ways from Lewisham to Bromley
and Beckenham . . . and added a new bridge." Presently, as
we learn, the local Turnpike Trustees widened the road " going
off of Clapham Common to Mitcham." ' The gentleman of
Camber well " did the same for "a very bad hollow way leading
by the Fox & Goose near that town." In country districts this
most necessary work of widening and straightening the roads
was often obstructed by the selfishness of landowners. " If,"
it was said in the same journal in September 1754, " there be
necessity of a small strip of land to make a road more com-
modious sometimes it is peremptorily refused ; and if you
would obtain it legally it would cost twenty times as much as it
is worth. If to obtain a short cut, or avoid a morass, you want
to pass through a field, you are generally refused, and put to
three times as much expense as the thing is worth." But the
greatest obstacle to improvement was found in the lack of
administrative ability among the Turnpike Trustees themselves.
It practically never occurred to such Trustees to get a professional
survey made of the road to be improved ; they never saw the
importance of getting competent advice as to the engineering
problems to be solved ; and when they did have some person
in their employment who was called a Surveyor, they failed to
realise that it would not do to let him at the same time act as
contractor for the execution of the work which he was required
to supervise.
The most defective side of turnpike administration was that
of finance. There was, to begin with, in nearly all Turnpike
Trusts, the usual eighteenth-century jobbery 1 in the purchase
1 It seems to have been quite usual for a Turnpike Trust, in spite of an
express prohibition by Parliament, to give orders for materials or work to
individual Trustees. Thus, when a House of Commons Committee looked into
the accounts of the Kensington Turnpike Trust for 1764, it was found that
an incredible number of loads of gravel were entered as put on three-quarters
190 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
of materials, in the connivance at bad work by contractors,
and in the appointment of the officials of the Trust itself. In
these respects, however, so far as our information goes, there is
no reason to suppose that the Turnpike Trustees were either
better or worse than contemporary local authorities generally.
It was in the method of raising their resources that the Trusts
were most open to criticism. Their relation with the com-
pulsory Statute Labour, to be rendered by the parishes through
which the road passed, was, with the uncertainty as to the amount
that they could exact and the method of obtaining it, in the
highest degree unsatisfactory. But the special source of revenue
of Turnpike Trustees was, of course, the toll, the collection of
which led to endless evasions, inequalities and favouritisms of
all kinds, arbitrary exactions, and systematic petty embezzle-
ments. We need not here dwell on the various devices by which
the legislature and the Trustees tried to protect themselves
against the ingenuities of those seeking to avoid the tolls — the
vigilant closing up of bye-lanes or side roads, and the perpetual
shilling or multiplication of the gates in order to counteract
the inveterate desire to go round ; together with the long array
of penalties on such dodges as taking off the supernumerary
horses, or lightening the load where going through the turnpike
gate, dashing through without payment, or fraudulently pre-
tending to come under one or other of the categories of exemption. 1
of a milo of road (Piccadilly) between Clarges Street and Knightsbridge ; and
further enquiry revealed that the gravel was supplied by one of the Trust* i ,
All the carpenter's work of the same Trust was contracted for by the partner
nf another Trustee (Report of House of Commons Committee appointed to
enquire into the application of money collected within the last twelve years,
by virtue of any Act of Parliament, for repairing any particular highway, 1705 ;
Souse of Commons Journals, vol. xxix.). Adam Smith had, it will be
remembered, the meanest opinion of the financial management of Turnpike
Trustees. " The money levin! is more than double of what is necessary for
executing, in the completes! mannor, the work, which is often executed in a
very slovenly manner, and sometimes not at- all" (Wealth of Nations, 177(1).
John Scott, who knew them at iirst hand, remarks that '"the Surveyors of
turnpike roads . . . are frequently decayed fanners or tradesmen, rei
mended by some friend or relation to an office they are absolutely unqualified
bo execute. " . . . [Some] " Trustees • . . are most earnest^ to provide a main
ice for their poor favourites by recommending them to offices they are
unfil for" (Digests of i)i< < Highway ami Turnpike Laws, by John Scott,
177s, pp. 255, 350).
1 Evasion by taking off supplementary horses before coming to the turn-
pike cifically forbidden by _l George II. (1750). There La a refer-
ence to this practice in Oenttema laga 8 ptember 1752. lightening
EXEMPTIONS FROM TOLL iqi
What made the incidence of the tolls specially inequitable, and
created a permanent sense of injustice, was the multiplicity
of exemptions and abatements that were allowed to favoured
trades or individuals. There were, to begin with, any number
of exemptions in favour of agriculture ; ploughs and implements
of husbandry of every kind, carts carrying manure, cattle going
to pasture, waggons bringing home the harvest were all privileged
to pass and repass free of toll, however much they wore out the
road. 1 Sometimes other local industries would be specially
favoured ; round Evesham, in Warwickshire, the flour-millers
were secured freedom of access for their customers and for the
materials needed for the repairs of their mills ; in Berkshire, in
a vain attempt to resuscitate a decaying local manufacture, it
was stipulated that " any cart or horse carrying or bringing
back any cloth, drugget, serge or other woollen manufacture,
the load in the same way was prohibited by 13 George III. c. 84, sec. 10
(General Turnpike Act, 1773). "Returning by way of frolic," relates Sir
Nathaniel Wraxall, " very late at night, on horseback, to Wimbledon from
Addisconibe, the seat of Mr. Jenkinson, near Croydon, where the party had
dined, Lord Thurlow the Chancellor, Pitt and Dundas found the turnpike gate
situate between Tooting and Stroatham thrown open. Being elevated above
their usual prudence, and having no servant near them, they passed through
the gate at a brisk pace, without stopping to pay the toll, regardless of the
remonstrances and threats of the turnpike man, who running after them dis-
charged the contents of his blunderbuss at their backs. Happily he did no
injury."
1 The exemption found most serious to the Turnpike Trustees seems to
have been that in favour of manure carts, perhaps because of the fact that,
with the increasing use of town manure (which Arthur Young found still un-
usual in most parts of England), this exemption became greatly stretched.
" It would undoubtedly be a real hardship on a farmer," said Scott already
in 1778, " to pay toll for bringing dung a few poles' length from his own yard
to his own fields . . . but the matter is quite dissimilar when old rags, chalk,
lime, bones, etc., are carried, in heavy loads, ten, twelve and perhaps twenty
miles, and at once reap the benefit of the road and contribute to damage it "
(Digests of the General Highway and Turnpike Laws, by John Scott,1778, p. 276).
It was just these " narrow wheeled waggons carrying muck from Norwich "
that were complained of in 1808 as perpetually cutting up that turnpike road.
" The damage which this never-ceasing wear and tear does to the road," it
was said, " is much greater than arises from all the other traffic upon it put
together " (Second Report of House of Commons Committee on Highways, 1808).
Attempts were made to get also exempted carts and waggons going empty
to town in order to bring back manure ; see the report of the meeting of
" gentlemen, farmers, gardeners, and landowners " held in London, Morning
Advertizer, 4th April 1810. This was conceded by Parliament under com-
plicated restrictions. The toll was to be paid, and a special " manure ticket "
given in exchange, on production of which on the return journey with manure,
the money was to be repaid by the toll-collector (52 George III. c. 145, 53
George III. c. 82).
192 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
to or from any fulling mill," should be free from toll. 1 The
conveyance of coal was specially favoured in some districts,
and that of " peat, peat ashes, or turf " in others. A particular
town would insist on the exemption of " carriages carrying hay
or straw to be used within the said borough." More general
was the exemption — specially useful because most tolls were
doubled on Sundays — of local residents riding or driving to and
from church, or attending a funeral. 2 Most Acts forbade the
taking of toll on the days of Parliamentary elections in the
district, the borough and county elections being sometimes
both particularly specified. Post-horses carrying mails, waggons
transporting the baggage of soldiers on the march, and carts
used for the passing of vagrants were almost universally
exempted. 3 What was, however, more invidious was the special
1 Special exemptions in the interests of particular trades included the
following : (a) flour-milling : exempted from toll were " all persona who shall
carry any grist to be ground for their own private use, and all horses (called
the load horses) employed by any miller to carry grist belonging to any private
family to or from the mill," as well as " horses and carriages " used to carry
materials for " building and repairing mills," 17 George II. c. 13 (Evesham
Turnpike Act, 1713) ; (6) cloth making : 20 George II. c. 6 (Reading and Punt-
held Turnpike Act, 1746); (c) coal-carrying: 24 George II. c. 11 (Lancaster
and Richmond Turnpike Act, 1750) ; (d) peat-carrying : 20 George II. c. G,
1746; (e) hay and straw carrying: 17 George II. c. 13 (Evesham Turnpike
Act, 1743).
2 The invariable provision as to doubled tolls on Sundays did not satisfy
the Sabbatarians, and it was frequently urged that there should be " a great
additional toll at each turnpike gate," on carriages passing through on Sunday;
see for such a recommendation in 1800, Anecdotes of the Life of Richard Watson,
Bishop of Llandaff, by his son, Richard Watson, 1817, p. 342.
3 As to exemption on election daj^s, see, for instance, 24 George II. c. 29
(Ludlow Turnpike Act, 1750). We append a specimen exemption clause : " No
toll shall bo taken for any person . . . carrying any quantity of materials for
repairing the said road ; or for carrying dung, mould, soil or compost of any
kind for manuring lands or gardens ; nor for carrying hay or com in the straw
being the product of . . . the said townships ... to be laid up in the houses,
etc., of the . . . inhabitants . . . nor shall toll bo taken for any ploughs or
other instruments of husbandry . . . nor for any person residing in the town-
ships . . . passing ... to and from church ... or who shall attend tin'
funeral of any persons who shall die or be buried in cither of the said townships ;
or for post-horses carrying the mail or packet; or for any cattle going to or
from water or pasture ; nor for the horses of soldiers on the march or carriages
attending them ; or for horses, carts or waggons travelling with vagrants sent
by legal passes" (2! George II. c. 13, Stretford and Hulmo Turnpike Act,
1750). As regards soldiers, "in early Turnpike Acts, as for instance local
iitcs passed in Charles II.'s and later reigns, the army upon its march
was exempted from the tolls thereby imposed. In 1778 the General Turnpike
Act (18 George HI. C (il!) contained the first general exception in favour of
the Army, which in the year 1799 was inserted in the Mutiny Act" {Military
Forces <>/ the Crown, by C. M. Clode, 18G9, vol. i. p. 214). The exemption in
"COMPOUNDERS" 193
privilege of exemption which influential inhabitants were some-
times able to secure, for themselves, their families, their work-
men, their servants, and their agents, and for those of all successive
owners and occupiers of their premises, as the price of abstaining
from Parliamentary opposition. 1 These specific Parliamentary
exemptions by no means exhausted the list of favours. The
Trustees were authorised, both by general statutes and by their
own Local Act, to compound for the tolls ; and this power was
very generally exercised, not only in the case of regular and
frequent users of the road, but also in favour of the inhabitants
of particular parishes, and even of individual Trustees them-
selves. In the records of the Epping and Ongar Trust, as we
have already mentioned, we find, between 1769 and 1789, from
a score to fifty compounders, paying from 5s. 3d. to 21s. each a
year, for exemption from all tolls on themselves, their horses,
their carriages, their families and their servants. But the
exemptions and compositions accounted only for a small part of
the Trustees' loss of revenue. The men whom they appointed
as toll-collectors — turnpike gate-keepers, or " pikemen," as they
were called — were mere labourers, paid a wage of ten or twelve
shillings a week, often unable to read or write, and usually
incapable of keeping accounts. It was found necessary in 1763
elaborately to forbid them to absent themselves from their
posts during their periods of duty, and to require them to remain
until they were actually relieved. 2 The varying rates of charge,
favour of the Post Office had a similar history. Practically all Turnpike Acts
contained clauses exempting the mails, but some mentioned only post-horses,
others also carriages carrying mails. A General Act of 1785 made the broader
exemption universal (25 George III. c. 57).
1 In lieu of erecting a new turnpike gate at a certain point, the Trustees
of the Lincoln and Peterborough Road were authorised to agree with the
inhabitants of fifteen specified parishes for an annual payment of not more
than £40 each, in lieu of toll ; so long as tins sum is paid, the gate is not to
be erected (39 & 40 George III. c. 70, Lincoln and Peterborough Turnpike
Act, 1800).
In 1764 the " compositions " received by the Kensington Turnpike Trust
amounted to £326, or 8 per cent of the total receipts from toll ; and those of
the Marylebone Turnpike Trust to £308, or 13 per cent (Report of House of
Commons Committee to enquire into the application of money, etc., 1765).
For the Epping and Ongar case, see Minutes of the Epping and Ongar High-
way Trust, 1769-1870, by Benjamin Winstone, 1891, pp. 103-104, 137-138, 154.
2 For the prohibition of " pikemen " to leave their posts, see Report of
House of Commons Committee on the management and application of money
collected during the last eleven years for repairing any particular highway ;
House of Commons Journals, 19th April 1763, vol. xxix. p. 646.
O
194 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
the exemptions and compositions, the validity of tickets for
return journeys or other gates, and many other complications of
the toll made it impossible to devise any effective check on their
receipts. It was notorious that they habitually kept back part
of each day's collection for themselves. Hence, from the very
first, many Trusts resorted to the plan of " farming," leasing each
gate with its power of exacting toll for a definite sum per annum. 1
At first the gates were let by private contract by the personal
negotiations of the Justices of the Peace or Turnpike Trustees
themselves, to any one who would make himself responsible for
a lump sum, — sometimes to a publican, a little tradesman, or
even a labourer. Presently it became customary, and Parliament
made it compulsory, to resort, for the letting of the tolls, to
public auction and to accept the highest bidder as lessee. As the
mileage of turnpike roads increased, there grew up a whole class
of professional toll-farmers, often men of large capital, farming
tolls amounting to many tens of thousands a year, and employing
under them small armies of professional " pikemen." Old prints
and descriptions enable us to visualise these men, whom Dickens
loved to describe, and who have long since disappeared from
among us. "A pikeman . . . wore a tall black glazed hat and
corderoy breeches, with white stockings. But the most distinc-
tive part of his costume was his white linen apron." 2 Both
masters and men quickly became notorious for every kind of
sharp practice, illicit collusion and embezzlement. At the
periodical auctions at which the tolls were let, Parliament had
1 In 1709, the turnpike on the " Mountnessing road . . . with its profits
and tolls " was let by the Essex justices to a man for £400 per annum ; and
in 1710 the lease was renewed to the same tenant at the same rent for three
years (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Essex, 12th July 1709, 11th July 1710).
" Ordered . . . that it be referred to the Justices of the Peace of Chelms-
ford Division or to any two of them at their Petty Sessions ... to treat with
the present tenants of the profits of the Turnpike arising at Mountnessing or
with any other person for the letting the same for a term of years, and that
they endeavour to procure the best rent and tenants that can be got for tho
same, and do make report thereof at the next General Quarter Sessions " [ibid.
7th October 1718).
The West Kent Justices in Quarter Sessions let the " profits and tolls " of
the turnpike at Chalk in 1747 to the local alehouscheeper for £200 a year.
and in 1750 to "James Pearson <>f Chalk, Labourer," for £300 for a year
(ibid. West Kent, 6th June 1747, and 11th January 1750). In 1773 alehouse-
keepers were prohibited from being either Turnpike Trustees, or surveyors or
toll-collectors; but they might become toll-farmers, if th»v employed others
as collectors (13 George III. 0. 84, sec. 46, General Turnpike Act, 1773).
2 The Exeter Road, by C. G. Harper, 1899, p. 4.
TOLL AUCTIONS i 95
been careful, in 1773, x to specify with minuteness that elaborate
public notice was to be given, that the highest bidder was to be
accepted, and that " to prevent fraud or undue preference in
letting the said tolls, the Trustees must provide a glass, with so
much sand in it as will run from one end to the other in one
minute ; which glass, at the time of letting the tolls, must be
set upon a table and immediately after every bidding the glass
must be turned, and as soon as the sand is run out, it must be
turned again, and so for three times unless some other bidding
intervene." Sometimes the Trustees would announce a definite
reserve price as the lowest that they would accept. But what
probably neither Parliament nor the Trustees contemplated, and
what they certainly did not succeed in preventing, was the series
of elaborate combinations and private " knock-outs " among the
toll-farmers, which often prevented the full value of the tolls
being obtained. 2 " The tolls," it was said in 1809, " are annually
1 The statutory requirement of a minute-glass at toll auctions is in 13
George III. c. 84, sec. 31. For specimen advertisements of such lettings, see
that of the Trustees of the Shrewsbury roads, Shrewsbury Chronicle, 20th Feb-
ruary 1773 ; that of the Trustees of the Whetstone Turnpike, Morning Ad-
vertizer, 25th January 1806 ; the Trustees of the Marylebone Turnpike, for
two newly-erected " weighing engines or bridges," ibid. 19th May 1806 ; the
Trustees of the Old Street Road Turnpike, ibid. 22nd March 1810 ; the Trustees
of the Surrey New Roads, and those of the Old District of Brentford (including
weighing engine), ibid. 13th February 1818. The toll auctions were frequently
made scenes of convivial festivity, in order to attract possible bidders. In
one case, in 1814, £10 was granted for a dinner to those who attended the
auction (Minutes of the Hipping and Ongar Highway Trust, 1169-1S70, by
Benjamin Winstone, 1891, p. 172). A graphic description of a letting of tolls
hi the early part of the nineteenth century is given hi Records of Old, Times,
by J. K. Fowler, 1898, chap, ii., which is largely reproduced in The Development
of Transportation in England, by W. T. Jackman, 1916, vol. i. App. 4, pp. 681-
683, where other particulars are given. The sums involved were sometimes
very large. One gate on the Brighton road was said to take £2400 a year in
tolls. Tongue, of Manchester, was said to be responsible for the collection of
over £50,000 a year in tolls (Records of Old Times, by J. K. Fowler, 1898, p. 20).
But the Napoleon of toll-farmers was Levy, who was reported to have con-
tracted at one time for as much as half a million a year, being a third of the
aggregate toll revenue of the Kingdom ; as well as for £300,000 a year post-
horse duty (Highways and Horses, by Athol Maudslay, 1888, pp. 84-85 ; Old
Coaching Days, by Stanley Harris, 1882, p. 188). The tolls of the Whetstone
Turnpike Trust, for 8 miles in Middlesex of the London and Holyhead road,
were let by auction in 1831 for no less than £7530 per annum (Middlesex and
Hertfordshire Notes and Queries, vol. iv. pp. 91-94). At this time there were
daily on the road to Barnet "18 mails and 176 other coaches, besides road
waggons, postchaises and other vehicles " (The Holyhead Road, by C. G.
Harper, 1902, vol. i. p. 27).
2 It was definitely said in 1833, upon evidence given by the Macadams,
father and son, and others, that " combinations have been . . . successfully
196 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
farmed or let to individuals by auction, according to the last
year's produce. This the farmers keep as secret as possible, and
the amount can only be inferred from the increase of the terms
he proffers for the ensuing year. It is then his interest to make
the tolls as productive as possible ; but the gate-keepers he must
employ are more exposed to temptation, and over them exists
less control, than perhaps occurs in any other condition of men
in society. The only check their masters have upon them is by
reserving, upon detached days in the year, the tolls themselves,
and averaging by the produce the annual receipts, by changing
their stations almost daily, and by arbitrarily discharging them
if their returns do not reach the estimated amount. This be-
comes equally well-known to the gatekeeper, and he withholds
all beyond that amount. Instead of preventing, by information,
the violations of the laws limiting the number of passengers,
they are paid by the coachman to connive at the abuse ; and
the nature of their office renders them ready and constant
channels for the circulation of base coin." 1
To the student of public administration, it is interesting to
see how the imperfection of the financial machinery destroyed
the whole efficacy of many of the Parliamentary devices for
preserving the roads. When the simple prohibition of narrow
wheels, heavy loads and excessive teams had been proved to be
organized to defeat the provisions of the said Act . . . with regard to the
letting of tolls" (Second Report of House of Lords Committee on Turnpike
Trusts, 1833). A graphic account of them, and of the so-called " Whispering
Gallery" of conspirators, is given in Records of Old Times, by J. K. Fowler,
1898, pp. 18-20. One such combination or "knock-out" we see in the case
of the letting of the Epping and Ongar Turnpike tolls in 1801, when the two
pretended rivals in the auction-room afterwards come forward jointly to take
up the contract which had been knocked down to one of them for £1055. The
Trustees " suspected that there had been underhand proceedings . . . collusion
between those bidding for the tolls." This was eventually admitted by the
parties, who agreed to an increase in the price to £1201, at which a lease was
granted to them (Minutes of the Epping end Ongar Highway Trust, 1769-1870,
by Benjamin Winstone, 1891, pp. 102-104). Sec also Road Reform, by William
in, 1845, and our Story of the King's Highway, 1913.
1 The quotation as to fraud by pikemen is from a letter of C. M. Ward to
Sir John Sinclair; .see Report of House of Commons Committee on Broad
Wheels and Turnpike Roads, 1809, Appendix A. There are frequent complaints
as to the arbitrary exactions of the " pikemen " from inexperienced or timid
Hers ; see letter to Times, 18th June 1824. The lessee of the Epping and
Ongar tolls in 1816 was found persistently "taking more tolls on coaches,
liaises, etc., than he was entitled to." Criminal proceedings against him
were begun, but subsequently compromised (Minutes of the Epping and Omjar
Highway Trust, 1769-1870, by Benjamin Winstone, 1891, pp. 173-174).
THE WIDTH OF WHEELS 197
ineffective, 1 the country gentlemen who drafted the various
highway and turnpike statutes fondly thought to achieve their
end by imposing extra rates of toll for every narrow-wheeled
vehicle however loaded, and for every hundredweight of loading
on any vehicle, over and above a legally specified amount,
varying according to a complicated scale depending on the kind
of vehicle, the breadth of its wheels, the distance between them,
and even the season of the year. For this purpose Turnpike
1 We cannot here enter upon the elaborate contrivances for regulating the
shape, size and arrangement of wheels, so as to injure a soft road as little
as possible, which lasted for more than half a century. See A Treatise upon
Wheel Carriages, by Daniel Bourn, 1763 ; Observations on the Structure and
Draught of Wheel Carriages, an Inquiry into the Means of Preserving and
Improving the Public Roads, by J. Jacob, 1773 ; Some Brief Remarks upon
Mr. Jacob's Treatise on Wheel Carriages, by Daniel Bourn, 1773 ; Remarks on
the Comparative Advantages of Wheel Carriages of Different Structure and
Draught, by Robert Anstice, 1790 ; Observations on the Effects which Carriage
Wheels with rims of different shapes have on the Roads, by Alexander Gumming,
1797 ; A Supplement to the Observations on the contrary effects of Cylindrical
and Conical Carriage Wheels, by the same, 1809 ; A Treatise on Wheels and
Springs for Carriages, by Davies Gilbert, M.P., F.R.S. ; An Essay on the Con-
struction of Roads and Carriages, by R. L. Edgeworth, 1817 ; Cursory Remarks
on Wheeled Carriages, by John Cook ; and An Essay on the Construction of
Wheel Carriages as they affect both the roads and the horses, by Joseph Storrs
Fry, 1820. The subject engaged most of the attention of the House of Commons
Committee on the Preservation of Roads, etc., which published nine reports
between 1806 and 1811. For the whole subject see our Story of the King's
Highway, 1913.
One inventor went so far as to supersede wheels altogether, replacing them
by two or four broad iron rollers, which it was supposed would level the ruts,
clear away the mud and cement the gravel. See A Treatise upon Wheel
Carriages, 1763, and Some Brief Remarks upon Mr. Jacob's Treatise on Wheel
Carriages, 1773, both by Daniel Bourn ; and Digests of the General Highway
and Turnpike Laws, by John Scott, 1778, pp. 269-270.
Apart from the difficulty of getting the law enforced, the provisions as to
width of wheels were largely nullified by the exception always made in favour
of carts used in and about husbandry and manuring of land (see, for instance,
5 George I. c. 6, 1718), and by the use of " dishing " or " conical " wheels,
with " tapering rims," by which the " tread " was reduced. " We have lately
seen," writes a practical critic in 1773, " the broad wheels of waggons which,
by Act of Parliament, should press a surface of nine inches, in reality bear
only on one of about three ; some of them by means of bevelling the edges
and raising the middle of the periphery ; and others by bevelling the whole
periphery and having the inner edge considerably higher than the other "
(Observations on the Structure and Draught of Wheel Carriages, by J. Jacob,
1773, p. 89). It may be said, in excuse of these regulations, that the heavy
waggons were demonstrably so destroying the soft roads of the time as to
cause the cost of their repair to become an intolerable burden. Certain
Warwickshire roads in 1765 were actually costing £84, and even £121, per mile
per annum (Inquiry into the Means of Preserving and Improving the Public
Roads, by Henry Homer, 1765, p. 78) ; or more than double the average cost
of the far superior turnpike roads of 1815.
198 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
Trustees were, from 1741 onwards, authorised, and might by
Quarter Sessions be required, to erect " a crane, machine or
weighing engine " to weigh the loads — not the convenient modern
weighbridge, which had not then been invented, but a huge and
complicated structure, rising high over the road, and actually
lifting the vehicle and its contents from the ground. 1 One such
machine may still be seen in situ at Woodbridge, Suffolk, and a
weird and incomprehensible structure it is. Its erection was
costly, and the expense of keeping men to work it was still
greater. It was never very accurate, and was always getting
out of order. ' It is a very common case," it was said in 1796,
" that a load will pass at one engine, when the same load at
another will be subject to an increased toll." It was, moreover,
hugely inconvenient to the users of the road, especially as it
was practically impossible to be always sure that a load was
under a given weight. There was thus every inducement to
evasion and neglect ; and the Trusts soon found that, apart
from the ordinary charges, the weighing machine did not yield
enough in extra tolls to pay for the necessary attendance and
upkeep. On the other hand, the toll-farmer was willing to give
a considerable additional price for the tolls if he was permitted
to rent also the weighing machine. The Trustees, in fact, were
in a dilemma. 2 'If," it was acutely pointed out to a House
1 The provision as to a weighing machine is in 14 George II. c. 42 (1740) ;
the power was often specifically repeated in Turnpike Acts ; see, for instance,
20 George II. c. 7, Essex Turnpike Act, 1746 ; it was afterwards embodied in
the General Turnpike Acts, 7 George III. c. 40, sec. 1, and 13 George III. c. 84,
sec. 1. For the uncertainty of such weighings, see Report of House of Commons
Committee on the General Turnpike Acts, 1796, p. 749. "The persons con-
cerned in the trade of market gardeners never are able to know the weight of
their articles, for sometimes it happens from a shower of rain a loading of
2 tons 5 cwt. will be increased three or four hundredweights."
2 As to the dilemmas presented by the weighing machine, see The Case
and Reasons for Disusing Weighing Machines on the Turnpike Roads, 1771 ;
Observations on Stage-Waggons, Stage-Coaches, Turnpike Roads, Tollbars, Weigh
ing Machines, etc., by William Deacon, 1807 ; and the letters from ( '. M. Ward
and F. Dickina to Sir John Sinclair, in Report of House of Commons Com-
mittee on Broad Wheels and Turnpike Roads, 1809, Appendix A. The Clerk
lo I he Trustees of the Stamford Hill roads said that lie was satisfied that the
lessees of the weighing machines Buffered "carriages to pass through upon a
'■crlain weekly sum without, weighing them," though he could not prove it.
This led to the recommendation : "that . . . as weighing engines are intended to
prevent excessive weights, and not to increase the revenue of the turnpikes, the
I rustees of roads should be restrained from Leasing or otlierw ise letting t he same "
(Reporl of House of Commons Committee on the General Turnpike Acts, 17!iii).
It was perhaps in consequence of this dilemma thai these costly weighing
THE WEIGHING MACHINE 199
of Commons Committee in 1808, " the engine continues in the
hands of the Trust, its purpose is completely defeated by the
corrupt connivance of the keeper employed ; not only may he
allow overweight to pass for a small reward, but he may share
profits with the driver carrying extra weight unknown to his
employer, and thus both the Trust and the master carrier will
be defrauded. If the weighing machine is let by the year for
a certain sum, nearly equal to its supposed receipts, to an indi-
vidual whose own interest will keep him vigilant, that very
interest will lead him to compound with the carriers of over-
weight ; indeed composition is the only way by which he can
repay himself for the rent of the engine. Were he to be rigid in
the exaction of every penalty he would put a stop to overweights
and to his own profits together. If, in a word, the weighing
engine constituted an effectual check to overweighted carriages,
the penalties exacted would amount to a very trifling sum.
engines were sometimes left, like one at Hammersmith in 1800, " for many
years disused and suffered to fall into decay " (Report of a Committee of the
Hammersmith and Brentford Turnpike, 1800, p. 7). Already in 1796 the
Trustees of the Surrey Turnpike had removed their engine seven or eight
years before (Report of House of Commons Committee on the General Turn-
pike Acts, 1796). A Committee in 1833 recommended the total " abolition of
the use of weighing engines " (Second Report of House of Lords Committee
on Turnpike Trusts, 1833).
Among other heavy vehicles objected to came, in the latter part of the
century, the heavily laden stage coaches, which were exempt from subjection
to the weighing engines. An Act of 1788 restricted them to six outside
passengers, in addition to two on the box by the driver (2S George III. c. 57).
A more stringent measure in 1790, known as " Gammon's Act," attempted to
reduce this to four and one respectively, or fewer if under three horses, and
did its best to prevent drivers allowing more by imposing a toll of five shillings
on every passenger in excess (30 George III. c. 36). But, as with the excess
tolls for overweight, it was soon found that the pikernen " notoriously com-
pound with the drivers of coaches," and the practice continued unabated
(Report of Committee of Hammersmith and Brentford Turnpikes, 1800, pp. 18,
33). " Mr. Gammon's Act," it was pointed out in 1794, " is now openly set
at defiance, and sometimes 20 persons are to be found at the outside of a stage
coach on the roof which by law is limited to six " (Times, 19th April 1794).
" The salutary regulations provided by these Acts," reported a Committee of
1806, " have been by a variety of contrivances most grossly evaded, insomuch
that instead of 6 (the number limited by the original Act) 20 passengers and
more are often carried on the outside of stage coaches " with results not only
" extremely destructive " to the roads, but also dangerous, as " scarce a week
passes without some of these carriages breaking down " (First Report from
House of Commons Committee on Broad Wheels and Turnpike Roads, 1806).
A further Act was then passed, facilitating the enforcement of the preceding
ones (46 George III. c. 136). See The Danger of Travelling on Stage Coaches
and a Remedy Proposed, by Rev. W. Milton, 1810, and Brief Considerations on
the Present State of the Police of the Metropolis, by L. B. Allen, 1821.
2oo THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
But they are let or farmed out for considerable sums, which
completely proves that, instead of operating as a prevention,
they only become an additional toll for extra load." Assuming
that, on the soft surface of the period, it was desirable to dis-
courage the conveyance of heavy weights, especially on narrow
wheels in winter, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion, drawn
by an able critic, in 1808, that, as actually worked, the whole
system of extra tolls and weighing machines was " injurious to
the roads instead of tending to their preservation, because being
rented, the renters compound with the owners of waggons to
receive double tolls going and returning, on permission to carry
any weight. The immense rents given for weighing machines
could not be raised by any other means."
The most serious of all the financial defects of the Turnpike
Trusts was, however, the deficit into which many of the bodies
of Trustees fell. The new revenue of tolls seemed, at first, to
promise inexhaustible annual resources, which Parliament
allowed to be mortgaged without check or limit. Already by
1773, the effect of reckless finance had made itself apparent in
many Trusts. " At the first erection of turnpikes," wrote
Thomas Butterworth Bayley. " the people imagine the roads
are to be made and kept in repair by the very charm of the word
turnpike, and not being obliged to continue their statute work
with so much attention as formerly, depend entirely on the tolls,
and fall into a state of negligence and indifference till at length
the first materials are worn out, and then the tolls being mort-
gaged to the height, the whole burden of renewing and supporting
the roads again is laid upon them with the additional tax of the
tolls." l By the end of the century the mortgaging of tolls had
1 Observations on the General Highway and Turnpike Acts, by Thomas
Butterworth Bayley, 1773, p. 52. " Cases may be found," said the House
of Commons Committee, "where persons taking the management are rather
disposed to maintain establishments beneficial to themselves, than to relieve
. . . the public burdens" (Second Report of House of Commons Committee
on Highways, 1808). "There is aot a gentleman in the Kingdom," writes
one who was himself a squire, " who cannot bear testimony to the lax manner
in which the duties of turnpike road commissioners arc discharged, to the total
absence of all personal responsibility . . . and to the general improvidence of
the expenditure " (.4 Letter to the Right Hon. C. B. Balhitrsl, M.P., on the subject
of the Poor Lama, by Richard Blakemore, IS19, p. 32).
See also Observations on the Formation, state and < 'ondition <>f Twnpih Roads
(iml other Highways, with Suggestions for their Permanent Improvement on
Scientific Principles, by A. H. Chambers, 1820.
THE TURNPIKE DEBT 201
been carried to a great height, and many Trusts made default
in the payment of interest on their bond debt. Between 1830
and 1838 no fewer than 84 separate Trusts were thus in default.
Sir James Macadam stated in 1839 that he knew of some Trusts
which had paid no interest for over sixty years. " In some
instances," reported the House of Commons Committee in 1808,
" they have contracted debts bearing an interest nearly equal to
the amount of their tolls, and when those have been increased
fresh debts are incurred ; so that the contributions levied on
individuals using the road become directed to purposes wholly
different from their repair." In some instances the road was
seized by the mortgagees, who levied the tolls for the payment of
their own claims. In many other cases the arrears of interest
were habitually added to the bonded debt, which came, in con-
sequence, eventually to exceed seven millions sterling for the
whole kingdom— a considerable part of which was never repaid. 1
With the whole or the greater part of the tolls thus alienated
for payment of interest on past indebtedness — sometimes even
with the mortgagees in possession, taking the whole money
revenue for their arrears of interest and heavy legal expenses —
the expenditure on the repair of the road was naturally reduced
to a minimum, and it may well be that, in many cases, the last
state of such turnpike roads was worse than the first. Arthur
Young, in his travels about England, clearly implies that the
great majority of the turnpike roads were far better than the
parish highways, but occasionally he comes across one in Wales,
in Lancashire or in Suffolk which he cannot believe to be a turn-
pike, so vile is its condition of disrepair. It was, indeed, as was
subsequently perceived, a " great defect in the system of turnpike
laws " that there was an utter lack of " provision to compel each
Trust to account before some competent tribunal. Road Commis-
sioners," said the Edinburgh Review in October 1819, " are the
only persons entrusted by Parliament to levy a large revenue
from the public without being required to account in any way
for what they receive. A still greater defect is the want of any
1 Analysis of the Defective State of Turnpike Roads and Turnpike Securities,
with Sxiggestions for their Improvement, by Francis Phillips, 1834 ; House of
Commons Committees on Turnpikes, 1833, 1836, 1838 ; Royal Commission on
Roads, 1840; History of Private Bill Legislation, by F. Clifford, 1 885-1 8S7, vol.
ii. p. 18 ; The Development of Transportation in Modern England, by W. T.
Jackman, 1916, pp. 612-613.
202 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
proper remedy when a set of Commissioners abuse their trust.
They may suffer their road to become a perfect ruin ; they may
embezzle funds and commit every sort of malpractice, and yet
go on levying tolls, keeping possession of the road and defying
all complaints." There was, in fact, no practical method of
bringing a defaulting, hopelessly incompetent or dishonest
Turnpike Trust to book. Subject to no official superintendence
or central control, under no inspection, rendering no accounts,
it could use or neglect its powers as it chose. A Turnpike Trust
could not even be indicted for letting its roads become impassable.
The only legal remedy was the presentment or indictment of the
parish or township within which the road lay. 1 The creation of
a special statutory Trust had left unimpaired the liability of the
parish to maintain " the good passage " on all parts of the King's
Highway, whether or not some other persons had received a
statutory right to exact tolls from those who travelled on it.
Spasmodically the law would be put in force. Some public-
spirited Justice of the Peace would formally present an exception-
ally neglected bit of turnpike road, or the parish would find itself
indicted at the suit of some aggrieved user of the road, with the
result of a fine, a special highway rate, a momentary spurt of
activity in enforcing Statute Labour, and an early reversion to
1 When the Post Office wanted to extend its mail coach service from
Shrewsbury to Holyhead, and found the turnpike road actually unsafe, the
Postmaster- General began by sending letters to the Treasurers of the several
Turnpike Trusts on the route, asking them to effect improvements. This
producing no result, he had 21 parishes indicted, and thus compelled them to
do some repairs, though they proved insufficient to bring the road up to the
requirements of a fast mail coach route (Second Report of House of Commons
Committee on the Holyhead Road, 1810 ; Her Majesty's Mails, by W. Lewins,
18(54, p. 142).
The provision as to apportioning the fine and costs is in 13 George III.
c. 84, sec. 33, General Turnpike Act, 1773. "As the law now stands," wrote
Sir J. ('. Eippisley to Sir John Sinclair in 1808, "if any part of a turnpike
road be out of repair, remedy is given by presentment or indictment of the
parish in which such road is situate, subjecting the parish to great expense
and inconvenience, although the nuisance be wholly imputable to the trustees
of the turnpike. ... It is true that . . . Quarter Sessions may apportion
lines and costs between the Parish and Turnpike Trust, yet this power can
afford very inadequate relief or compensation in many eases, where the parishes
have been harassed by prosecutions for nuisances for whieh (hey have in do
respect been equitably responsible; for their parish officers, travelling thirty
or forty miles to the Quarter Sessions; for loss of time, etc"
(Sir J. C. Ilippisley. Bart., .M.I'., bo Sir John Sinclair. 4th April 1808;
Second Report of Souse of Commons Committee on Highways, 1808, Appendix
A, p. 136.)
A SUBSTANTIAL IMPROVEMENT 203
the former neglect. It is true that, from 1773 onward, the
Court could apportion the fine and costs between the parish and
the Trust, but only " in case it shall appear to the Court from
the circumstances of the Turnpike debts and revenues that the
same may be paid without endangering the security of the
creditors who have advanced money upon the credit of the tolls " ;
and the parish, in practice, never got reimbursed the expense to
which it was put. So flagrantly unjust was it to punish the local
parishioners, who had nothing to do with the administration of
the Turnpike Trust, for the default or neglect of a separate
authority, which still went on exacting its tolls, that this pro-
cedure of presentment and indictment was, in practice, even less
effective for turnpike roads than for parish highways. The
injustice was so glaring that public opinion was arrayed against
any such presentment of parishes, and in 1809 it was definitely
discouraged by a Committee of the House of Commons. 1
The foregoing description of the theory and practice of turn-
pike administration, and our analysis of its defects, might lead
the student to assume that all the effort and money lavished
by the eighteenth-century Turnpike Trusts resulted in no net
advantage to the community. This would be a false conclusion.
The parish highway often consisted, as we have described in our
Story of the King's Highway, of a mere horse track across a miry
common, or a watery hollow lane twisting between high banks
and overhanging hedges. So deep and narrow were these ways
that " the stag, the hounds and the huntsmen," Edgeworth
tells us, 2 " have been known to leap over a loaded waggon in a
hollow way without any obstruction from the vehicle." Such
a highway was practically impassable for wheeled vehicles, and
sometimes even for horsemen, for half the year. With the coming
of the Industrial Revolution, with a rapidly increasing population,
with manufactures ready to leap from the ground, with unprece-
dented opportunities for home and foreign trade, improvement
of communication between different parts of the kingdom became,
1 " That it is the opinion of this Committee that, in the case of any present-
ment or indictment of any highway being a turnpike road, the said presentment
or indictment should be preferred against the treasurer of such Trust, instead
of the parish through which such roads run " (Report of House of Commons
Committee on Broad Wheels and Turnpike Roads, 1809).
2 An Essay on the Construction of Roads, by R. L. Edgeworth, 2nd edition,
1817.
2o 4 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
from the standpoint of material prosperity, the most urgent of
national requirements. To-day, the railway and the tramway,
the telegraph and the telephone, have largely superseded roads
as the arteries of national circulation. But, barring a few
lengths of canal in the making, and a few miles of navigable
river estuaries, it was, throughout the eighteenth century, on
the King's Highway alone that depended the manufacturer
and the wholesale dealer, the hawker and the shopkeeper, the
farmer, the postal contractor, the lawyer, the government
official, the traveller, the miner, the craftsman and the farm
servant, for the transport of themselves, and the distribution
of their products and their purchases, their services and their
ideas. Hence, to open up even some of the ways between the
Metropolis and the rest of the country, between the ports and
the landward counties, between the food-producing districts
and the new manufacturing centres, was worth almost any
money cost, however vexatiously it might be raised or however
wastefully it might be spent. And all contemporary evidence
indicates that, what with surface-making and embanking,
widening and straightening, levelling and bridging, the mileage
of usable roads was, by the eighteenth-century Turnpike Trusts,
very greatly extended. 1 The frequent complaints of the local
1 " The Commissioners of the road from Whitechapel into Essex very well
understand and perform their office. . . . Justice ought to be done also to the
Commissioners of the Turnpikes leading into Kent over Shooters Hill, who
endeavour to make the road straight, by cutting off all angles, and widening
it" (Gentleman's Magazine, May 1749). Speaking generally of the roads in
England, a writer declares in 1754 that " amendments made of late years . . .
hare been very considerable. . . . The turnpike now forming Truro to Fal-
mouth, on the West, and to Grampound on the East, I look upon as a very
irly and complete piece of workmanship ; and indeed, it must be acknow-
ledged that the new turnpikes are better than the old. Thus, the Taunton
Turnpikes are better than the Bath or Bristol ; the Exeter better than either :
and the Truro in a fair way to exceed them all " (ibid. October 1754). The
dithyrarubic quotation is from An Enquiry into tin- Means of Preserving and
Improving the Public Roads, by Henry Homer, 17(55, p. 8.
We may quote a few of these statements of the surveyors employed by the
Board of Agriculturo in 1794. Of Kent we read that " the turnpike mads, and
Mi. isc most frequented, are kept in tolerably good order ; but the bye-roads of
West Kent arc frequently impassable for postchaises " (General View of the
Agriculture of Kent, by J. Boyes, 1796, p. 90). Of Westmoreland ii is said
thai " the great roads leading through the county are kepi in excellenl repair
by the sums collected at the turnpike gates" (General View of the Agriculture
of Westmoreland, by A. Pringle, ITitI, p. .'57). The Nottinghamshire reporter
testifies thai " the roads of this country are of late years much improved,
many parishes having learnt from the example of the turnpikes to form them
properly, and have them executed under an understanding surveyor " (General
THE "FACE OF DISPATCH" 205
absence of turnpikes indicate in themselves how completely
the new system had commended itself to the ordinary traveller.
Before the middle of the century particular roads are marked out
for praise. Between 1750 and 1770, when the number of Turn-
pike Trusts was actually trebled, the contemporary self-com-
placency over the new roads rises to dithyrambic heights.
' There never was a more astonishing revolution accomplished
in the internal system of any country," declares an able and
quite trustworthy writer in 1767, " than has been within the
compass of a few years in that of England. The carriage of
grain, coals, merchandise, etc., is in general conducted with
little more than half the number of horses with which it formerly
was. Journeys of business are performed with more than double
expedition. . . . Everything wears the face of dispatch . . . and
the hinge which has guided all these movements and upon which
they turn is the reformation which has been made in our public
roads." Thirty years later, when the standard of efficiency in
roads had greatly risen, the reports by the critical surveyors
of the Board of Agriculture are more grudging. But with the
exception of Wales, they everywhere report a substantial im-
provement and development, by the agency of the Turnpike
Trusts, of the means of communication within each county.
And we have the significant fact that the most eminent observers
of, and participators in, the local government of the latter half
of the century — Sir Henry Hawkins, Dr. Richard Burn, John
Scott, and Arthur Young — all expressly assert, or at least un-
equivocably imply, the expediency of the Turnpike Trust and
its toll. Our own conclusions coincide with this verdict. The
intense jealousy of any increase of the national executive govern-
ment, and the abhorrence of new local rates would have made
impracticable any project for a centralised road administration,
or for raising the necessary income by direct assessment. " If
rates on land had been resorted to," said Sir Henry Parnell,
' the measure would inevitably have failed, because the land-
View of the Agriculture of Nottingham, by R. Lowe, 1794, p. 53). Of North-
umberland it is said that " the turnpike roads are most in good order, but
badly designed " (General View of the Agriculture of Northumberland, by
J. Bailey and G. Culley, 1794, p. 56). As to Lancashire, where manufactures
had so enormously increased, and turnpikes were almost universal, we are told
that " Great exertions have been of late years at very considerable expense
to improve the roads, the effects of which are very apparent " (General View
of the Agriculture of Lancashire, by John Holt, 1794, p. 64).
206 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
owners would, beyond all doubt, have preferred bad roads and
low rates to good ones and high rates ; in point of fact, very
indifferent roads would have answered all their local purposes.
If the roads had been vested in the hands of government, it may
safely be said that this plan would also have failed, for govern-
ment would never have been able to obtain the consent of Parlia-
ment to vote upwards of a million and a half a year for those
roads only which now are turnpike roads. It is therefore to the
turnpike system of management that England is indebted to her
superiority over other countries with respect to roads. . . .
Nothing but leaving the management of the roads to those
people who live in their neighbourhood would ever have induced
the people of England to pay, as they now do, a road revenue,
arising from turnpike tolls, to the amount of £1,500,000 a year ;
for, though tolls are in every respect fair and proper for main-
taining a road ; and although Government by employing scientific
engineers, might have expended the produce of them with
greater skill than country gentlemen ; the hostility to pay
them, if they had been wholly at the disposal of government,
would no doubt have prevented the making of useful roads so
universally over the whole country as they have been made under
the established system." 1 The Turnpike Trust and its toll was,
in short, the only way open. Without the local initiative and
local support fostered by the thousand separate Trusts ; without
the emulation and mutual instruction which their several experi-
ments promoted ; without the large revenues which the toll
drew from the multitudinous but politically helpless road users,
no considerable improvement in the highways of England would
have taken place for, at any rate, the first three-quarters of the
eighteenth century, and very little would have been achieved
before the passing of the Reform Bill. 2
1 A Treatise on Roads, by Sir Henry Parncll, afterwards Lord Congleton,
is:;:?, pp. 263-264, 288-289.
2 As late as 1824 the English Turnpike system was a subject < >f envy to a
French traveller. Baron Dupin, who had long been impressed with the English
administration (see his Mimoires sur In marine </ lea pout* <i chausaiee de
France <t .1 n jh tirrr, 1818), observes that " in Prance, during the Revolution,
i he government wished to establish turnpikes on our main roads, as in England ;
and as in England the people at first rose in revolt against the system. But
the Directory had not sufficient firmness for maintaining this useful innovation,
i ought now to be taken up again, and energetically enforced " (]'oijages
la Grand Bretagne, Troisieme Partie, force Commeroiale, by Baron Charles
Dupin, ls2t, vol. i. p. 33). We may here conveniently give some statistical
TURNPIKE STATISTICS 207
Passing from the legal constitution and powers of the Turn-
pike Trust, we may get from the descriptions of contemporaries
some glimpses of the body as it actually existed. In order to
avoid local opposition, those who were promoting a Turnpike
Bill made a point of including as Trustees every one of influence
in the neighbourhood— not merely the squires and parsons and
their agents or bailiffs, but also the principal tenant-farmers
and shopkeepers. " The practice," said Sir Henry Parnell,
" is to make almost every opulent farmer or tradesman a trustee,
residing in the vicinity of a road, as well as all the nobility and
persons of large landed property ; so that a Trust seldom consists
of fewer than 100 persons, even if the length of the road to be
maintained by them does not exceed a few miles." 1 Of these
conception of the height reached in England and Wales by this system. In
1838 the 22,000 miles of turnpike road, representing about one-fifth of the
total highway mileage of the kingdom, were under 1116 Trusts, employing 3555
treasurers, clerks and surveyors (besides some 20,000 toll-collectors, etc.) and
levied £1,458,000 at their 7796 toll-gates and side bars, spending in all about
£51 a year on each mile of road, and having over £7,000,000 of debt (Journal
of the Royal Statistical Society, January 1839).
For a vision of the stage-coach organisation at its best, see such books as
Coaching, with Anecdotes of the Mood, by Lord William Lennox, 1876 ; Annals
of the Road, or Notes on Mail and Stage Coaching in Great Britain, by Nimrod
(Captain H. E. Malet), 1876 ; Old Coaching Days, 1882 ; and The Coaching
Age, 1885, by Stanley Harris ; Brighton and its Coaches, by W. C. A. Blew,
1894 ; Forty Years at the Post Office, 1895, and On the Track of the Mail Coach,
1895, both by F. E. Baines ; Coaching Days and Coaching Ways, by W. O.
Tristram, 1901 ; and Stagecoach and Mail in Days of Yore, by C. G. Harper,
1903. " A passenger could coach from Portsmouth to Holyhead, from Barn-
staple to Berwick, with changes and stoppages it is true, but by a continuous
mailcoach road, without passing through London. The country resounded with
the blast of the horn and the rattle of pole-chains " (Forty Years at the Post
Office, by F. E. Baines, 1895, pp. 37-38). There was eventually coaching
communication, with changes, from Falmouth to Thurso. Birmingham was,
in effect, the centre of the system, at which most coach lines crossed.
It may be added that the stage-coaches, rendered possible only by the
turnpike roads, carried inside passengers at from 2Jd. to 4d. per mile, and
outside passengers at from 2d. to 3d. per mile. The new railways adopted fares
only slightly lower than these rates, being about 3d. per mile first class, 2d.
second class, and a penny to three halfpence third class. But they carried
passengers at about 24 miles per hour, or two or three times the speed of the
coaches (The Development of Transportation in Modern England, by W. T.
Jackman, 1916, p. 605). The rate at which the coaches travelled, which, in
1750, had been only five or six miles per hour and 50 to 70 miles in a day, had
risen by 1830 to 9, 10 and even 12 or 13 miles per hour, for 185 miles (to
Manchester), 259 miles (to Holyhead), and even 400 miles (to Edinburgh) at
a stretch, taking 19, 27 and 45J- hours respectively (ibid. pp. 684-700).
1 A Treatise on Roads, by Sir H. Parnell, 1833, pp. 268-269 ; there were
" a prodigious number of Commissioners, frequently from one hundred to two
hundred, for the care of 10 or 15 miles of road " (Edinburgh Review, October
1819).
208 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
two or three hundred persons, all belonging to the ten or twelve
square miles directly served by the road, the numerical majority
were, in social status and education, little above the persons
who usually served the parish offices, and it was into their hands
that the meetings usually fell. Some of the Justices of the Peace
and clergymen who were on an important Turnpike Trust in
Middlesex and Essex petitioned Parliament in 1740 about this
very point. " There are many persons appointed ' : to their
Trust, they explain, " who have very little or no freehold in either
of the said Counties, and consequently are not so much con-
cerned for the same as the petitioners ; yet the said persons,
being many in number, and dwelling for the most part in or near
the parish of Whitechapel, where the meetings are held during
the six winter months ... by reason of their vicinity are
frequently more in number than the gentlemen whose freeholds
lie at a greater distance in Essex, from whence it happens that the
affairs of the said turnpike are chiefly influenced and governed
by them, who do sometimes carry questions by surprise, particu-
larly at a late meeting where they did, in a most extraordinary
and unjustifiable manner at an unreasonable time of the day,
without giving any notice, take upon themselves to discharge
one of the principal officers of the said Trust, without any charge
or accusation against him, or giving him any opportunity to
make his defence, though the said officer was at that very time
absent with their privity and consent." J The inevitable
tendency that the numerical majority of the active Commis-
sioners should make, not only the time and place, but also the
tone and manners of the meetings such as was most congenial
to them, cannot have failed to discourage the attendance of the
greater folk. The filling up of vacancies by co-option worked,
as we have shown in our work on The Parish and the County, in
the cases of the Close Vestries and the County Justices, and we
may now add also, in that of the Commissioners of Sewers,
1 House of Commons Journals, 10th January 1740. In this case the gentry
appeared to have persisted in their struggle, with the result that this Trust
earns, in 174!), the praise <>f the Oenilemari's Magazine. ' The Commissioners
of the road Erom Whitechapel into Essex," it was said, "very well under-
stand and perform their office" (Gentleman's Magazine, May 1740). They
the first to adopt what seemed then an improvement in road construc-
tion, viz. "the waving method," or laying out the road in short " waves.'
alternately risin:,' and falling, so as to let the water run off (ibid. November
175U).
THE MEETINGS OF THE TRUSTS 209
towards an homogeneity of membership, which — especially in
the Metropolitan area — almost inevitably tended downwards. 1
Unlike the Incorporated Guardians the majority of the Turn-
pike Trusts do not appear to have developed, right down to the
end of their being, any system of administration by executive
committees and salaried staffs. The whole body of one or two
hundred Trustees would be summoned — we gather, merely by
public advertisement and notices affixed to the turnpike gates — to
meetings held at the principal inn of the market-town ; and the
number and character of those who actually attended varied
enormously, according to the district, and also according to the
occasion. In the absence of an organised and responsible
executive, and even of authoritative standing orders, the gather-
ings often went anything but smoothly. ' The whole time of
these meetings," says an Edinburgh Reviewer of 1819, ' is
occupied in tumultuous and unprofitable discussions, and in
resolving on things at one meeting which run a good chance of
being reversed at the next ; so that the well-informed and
civilized Commissioners become very soon disgusted with the
disorderly uproar, or the want of sense, temper or honesty of
some of their companions ; and that the management finally
falls into the hands of a few, busy, bustling persons of low con-
dition, who attend the meetings with no idea of performing a
public duty, but for the purpose of turning their powers, by some
device or other, to the profit of themselves or of their friends and
relations." 2 At first, the meetings were often held, to suit the
ease and convivial desires of the majority, late in the afternoon,
which prevented many persons of the best class from attending.
This was partly stopped by a section of the General Turnpike Act
of 1773, which required all such meetings to begin between 10 a.m.
and 2 p.m. 3 Even then it was complained that " Such meetings
continue sitting in many parts of the Kingdom to a very late
hour, and in some instances, commence at a late hour in the
1 In the Kensington Turnpike Trust in 1763 the custom as to filling vacancies
was as follows. Two vacancies were always left unfilled, in case of some
special need for the appointment of a particular person. The others were
filled on the nomination of single Trustees, each nominating for a vacancy in
turn, as their names stood in alphabetical order ; subject, however, as a matter
of form, to the nominee in each case receiving the approval of a ballot of the
Trustees present (House of Commons Journals, vol. xxix. p. 650, 19th April
1763).
2 Edinburgh Review, October 1819. 3 13 George III. c. 84, sec. 56.
P
210 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
afternoon, to the great inconvenience of those trustees and
others who attend from a distance." x Where the meeting was
less of a convivial occasion, it was often found impossible to
induce any one to come, especially during the winter months.
In the Epping and Ongar Turnpike Trust, no meeting of five
Trustees could be obtained between September 1780 and May
1781. 2 The Turnpike Trust responsible for the important road
between Manchester and Oldham held four successive meetings
in the half year between August 1806 and March 1807 without
being able to get a quorum. 3 " I have known," writes Dr. Burn
in 1764, " a turnpike meeting advertised from three weeks to
three weeks, and never a competent number of trustees attended
for a year together." 4 It was, in fact, usually impossible to
persuade the country gentlemen and clergymen, who might have
been expected to supply the best element on the Trusts, to devote
any zeal or public spirit, or to give any continuous attention, to
the monotonous details of road repair. John Scott, the ablest
Turnpike Trustee of his time, complains bitterly of this neglect
among the Hertfordshire gentry. ; ' If," he says, " the Trustees
will not meet above two or three times a year, and then not in
a sufficient number to transact the affairs of their Trusts, or in
case their meetings are more frequent and better attended, if
those who attend will engage in common conversation instead
of attending to the business of the day. (consulting on the state
of their roads and considering how to remedy defects or produce
improvements) it is easy to tell what must be the consequence.
An adoption of that absurd maxim that everybody's business is
nobody's business, the parsimony of private life carried into
public affairs, an habitual retention of money which can be of no
service to the retainers, an acquiescent disposition fearful of
offending this man or the other man ; and an interested dis-
position watching every opportunity of serving self or a relation
or a tenant or a descendant, are all, more or less, operative to the
destruction of the roads of the nation." 5
1 Sir J. C. Hippisley, Bart., M.P., to the Chairman (if the Board of Agri-
culture, in Second Report of House of Commons Committee mi Highways, 1808,
Appendix, p. 136.
2 Minutes of the Epping and Ongar Highway Trust, 1769-1870, by B.
Winstunr, 1891, p. 122.
* MS. Minutes, Manchester and Oldham Turnpike Trust, 1806-1807.
* History of the Poor Laws, by Richard Burn, 1764.
* Digests of the General Highway and Turnpike Laws, by John Scott, 1778.
JOHN METCALFE 211
It was characteristic of Turnpike Trustees, to an even greater
degree than other Local Authorities of the period, that they saw
no necessity for incurring the expense of a qualified salaried staff.
The clerk — often called " Law Clerk " 1 — was habitually a small
local attorney, paid principally for the legal business, and con-
cerning himself not at all with the executive work. The nearest
approach to a salaried officer was the person called the " Sur-
veyor " — frequently only a superior labourer, a little master
craftsman, or an ex-butler or valet jobbed in by some leading
Trustee. " The Surveyors of turnpike roads," we are told in
1778, " are frequently decayed farmers or tradesmen, recom-
mended by some friend or relation to an office they are absolutely
unqualified to execute." 2 During the eighteenth century the
Surveyor was often engaged only when a particular piece of work
had to be done, but by the nineteenth century he had usually
become a permanent officer at a low wage, eked out by the profits
of contracting with the Trust for the execution of the verv work
that he had to superintend. " The art of taking levels," we are
told, " was at first above the capacity " of the persons who acted
as Surveyors to Turnpike Trusts ; their ; ' contracted ideas
extended no further than to the surface of the land which was
the scene of their operations. To them it would have appeared
a chimerical undertaking to have attempted to execute any plan
for reducing ground to a regular descent where it was to be
effected by raising valleys and sinking hills." 3 What the best of
the eighteenth-century road administrators aimed at getting was
an honest and diligent manager of labour, and (when a new piece
of work had to be done) a trustworthy contractor. Only very
occasionally — as in the extraordinary case of the blind fiddler,
John Metcalfe (1717-1810), who made many of the Lancashire
and Yorkshire roads between 1760 and 1790 4 — did the con-
1 For instance, in MS. Minutes, Manchester and Oldham Turnpike Trust,
2nd July 1806.
2 Digests of the General Highway and Turnpike Laws, by John Scott, 1778,
p. 255.
3 An Inquiry into the Means of Preserving the Public Roads, by Rev. Henry
Homer, 1765.
4 Life of John Metcalfe, commonly called Blind Jack of Knaresborough, by
himself, 1795 ; Lives of the Engineers, by Samuel Smiles, 1861, vol. i. ; Three
Lectures on Roads and Roadmakers, by H. A. Glass, 1864 ; Old Yorkshire, by
William Smith, 1883, pp. 170-174 ; Roadmaking and Maintenance, by Thomas
Aiken, 1900, p. 11 ; Story of the King's Highway, by S. and B. Webb, 1913,
p. 154.
212 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
tractor display any genius for road engineering. Even John
Scott was capable of saying that, when the Trustees are reason-
ably educated, " and will condescend to give their attendance, . . .
the best Surveyor they can employ will be an honest industrious
labourer, who has docility enough to understand and dexterity
enough to perform their orders." * Down to at least 1820 the
great majority of Turnpike Trustees refused to believe that the
office could not be efficiently filled by any person whatsoever.
"Every ignorant peasant," declares a professional writer of 1818,
" considers himself competent to lay out and execute roads in all
directions." 2 "I found at Epsom," said the younger Macadam
in 1819, " a person as Surveyor who had been an underwriter
at Lloyd's Coffee House, at a salary, as I am informed of £60 per
annum ; and who was permitted to keep the carts and horses
and do the cartage for the Trust. At Reading I found an elderly
gentleman as the Surveyor, who was also one of the Commis-
sioners, at a salary of twenty or thirty pounds per annum. I
found at Cheshunt three Surveyors the Trust being divided into
three districts. One of the Surveyors was an infirm old man,
another a carpenter, and another a coal merchant. I found on
the Wade's Mill Trust three Surveyors also, . . . one . . . was a
very old man, another a publican at Buckland, and the other a
baker at Backway, with a salary of fourteen shillings a week each.
I found on the Royston road a publican as Surveyor there ; and
I found at Huntingdon a bedridden old man who had not been
out of the house for several months." 3 It is only fair to say,
in justice to the Trustees, that the eighteenth-century roads had
not the advantage even of such engineering skill as then existed,
as road-making was regarded as beneath the dignity of a civil
engineer ; and right down to the nineteenth century " this pro-
fession," says Sir Henry Parnell, " has been too commonly
deemed by Turnpike Trustees as something rather to be avoided
than as useful and necessary to be called to their assistance."
The ordinary run of Turnpike Trustees may not unreasonably
have objected, in fact, to a trained professional civil engineer or
1 Digests of the General Highway and Turnpike Laws, by John Scott, 1778,
p. 255.
- Practical Directions for Laying Out and Making Roads, by James Clarice,
1818, p. 1.
3 Evidence of James Macadam (son), in Report of House of Commons
Committee on the State of the Highways, 1819.
THE TREASURER 213
surveyor, who would in the eighteenth century have made a
parade of " mathematics and mechanics and all that sort of
thing " to very little practical purpose. Such persons, it was
said in 1778, " are often very great men, and assume conse-
quential airs for doing little matters." x
This indisposition, or want of capacity, to organise an efficient
executive, served by a professional staff, led — especially during
the eighteenth century — to the adoption of equivocal methods of
administration, which were open to grave abuse. In many
districts the whole administration fell into the hands of the
Treasurer, who, as we learn in 1778, was " generally one of the
most opulent and intelligent of the Trustees, and . . . chairman
of their meetings." 2 The office carried with it no salary, but as
the Treasurer had at his disposal the monies received from tolls,
practically during his own pleasure, and with the minimum of
audit, it was often one of considerable advantage ; and we find
the Treasurer in many places assuming a position of authority
equivalent to that of the Expenditor General of some of the
contemporary Courts of Sewers described in our first chapter.
Thus, of the important County of Surrey we are told, in 1794,
that " for several years past the turnpike roads have been under
the direction of Treasurers who are Trustees of the roads, and
are appointed by the Trust at large, at a meeting held for that
purpose. A knowledge of the fundamental principles of making
roads is not deemed at all necessary to the erection of such
Treasurers, but they are generally some respectable gentlemen
in business, if near town, and whither perhaps they go every
day. Each appoints some inferior tradesman of the district in
which he lives to be the Surveyor, and who may be a carpenter,
a bricklayer or any other profession as it may happen, so that
without a particle of knowledge on the maintenance and principles
of roads on either side, is the expenditure of hundreds of pounds
committed to the day labourers, who are for the most part old
and decrepid, and who being generally left to themselves take
every advantage ; and as the Surveyor does not know how much
should be done, he is easily imposed upon by the men ; and as
the money does not come out of his pocket it is not very material
1 A Treatise on Roads, by Sir Henry Parnell, 1833, p. 291 ; Digests of the
General Highway and Turnpike Laws, by John Scott, 1778, p. 255.
2 Ibid. p. 254.
214 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
for him to give himself much trouble about it. Thus, from the
want of experience in the Surveyor, and the want of leisure in
the Treasurer, these roads, which, from their proximity to the
gravel on all sides, might, under a proper system, be kept sound
and in a good condition all the year round, are found to be daily
diminishing, and the public will, ere a few years longer, find it
expedient to take some steps to remedy so great a defect." x
Careless and indolent Turnpike Trustees hit on even a worse
administrative device than leaving the business entirely in the
hands of an unpaid and unprofessional Treasurer. We see them
putting the whole work of the Trust out by contract to the
speculator who offered the most advantageous terms. The
practice of farming the revenue of the Trust — the letting by
auction of the toll-gates and weighing machines to a " piker "
or toll-farmer, who paid a lump sum for the privilege of levying
the toll — quickly became universal, though the Trustees might
occasionally find themselves driven to take the collection into
their own hands for a short term, when for some reason they had
failed to agree with a contractor. This practice of farming the
tolls led, as we have shown in our Story of the King's Highway,
to many frauds and exactions. But it enabled the Trusts to
dispense with the organisation of their own collecting staff, and
considering the surpassing difficulty of checking the collection
of tolls at many different gates at great distances apart, there
was, under eighteenth-century conditions, something to be said
for the practice. But many Turnpike Trusts applied the
favourite contemporary device of contracting for the execution
of their service as well as for the collection of their revenues.
Some local tradesman or tenant farmer would undertake, for a
lump sum, to keep the whole stretch of road in repair. The
contemporary writers agree that this device proved no more
satisfactory in the maintenance of roads than in the maintenance
of workhouses or prisons. It was merely to " a desire in Trustees
to be exonerated from trouble," that John Scott ascribed " that
most pernicious practice of farming roads, which, like farming
the poor, is the disgrace of our country. The Trustees, when
once a road is farmed, have nothing to do but meet once a year
to eat venison and pay the farmer his annuity ; the farmer has
1 General View of the Agriculture of Surrey, by W. J. and Jaoob Malcolm,
1794, pp. 62-63.
'•FARMING THE ROAD" 215
nothing to do but to do as little work and pocket as much money
as he possibly can ; he has other fish to fry, other matters to
mind, than road-mending. Encroachment after encroachment
takes place ; the hedges and trees grow till they meet overhead ;
the landholders are excused from their Statute Duty, and the
water and the narrow-wheeled vehicles complete the business.
At length, perhaps, the universal complaint of travellers, or
menaces of indictment, rouse the Trustees for a moment ; a
meeting is called ; the farmer sent for and reprimanded, and a
few loads of gravel buried among the mud serve to keep the way
barely passable. . . . These practices of farming roads and
farming the poor ought to be prohibited by law." 1
The foregoing description may be taken to represent the
working constitution of the numerical majority of the thousand
Turnpike Trusts right down to 1835. But many of the more
important and wealthier Trusts — such, for instance, as those
administering busy lengths of road near the Metropolis or other
populous centres, and taking several thousand pounds a year in
tolls — were, by the nineteenth century, driven, in one way or
another, to develop a more efficient executive. There is fortun-
ately accessible to the general reader a complete account of the
internal administration of one such Turnpike Trust — that of the
roads about Epping and Ongar in Essex 2 — which, in its good
and bad features alike, is, we think, fairly typical of the larger
Turnpike Trusts of the reign of George the Third. The road
between Harlow and Woodford — the principal thoroughfare in
that part of Essex — had been one of those placed under the care
of the local Justices of the Peace at the latter part of the seven-
teenth century, and for three-quarters of a century tolls were
levied, special surveyors appointed and the roads repaired under
their authority. In 1768, we know not for what reason, the
1 Digests of the General Highway and Turnpike Laws, by John Scott, 1778,
p. 345.
2 Minutes of the Epping and Ongar Highway Trust, 1769-1870, a Contribu-
tion to Local History, by Benjamin Winstone, privately printed, 1891 ; 1 William
and Mary (1690) ; 1 Anne, s. 2, c. 10 (1702) ; House of Commons Journals,
19th November 1702 ; 10 George I. c. 9 (1723) ; 17 George II. c. 9 (1744) ;
9 George III. (1768); 30 George III. (1790); 51 George III. (1811); 3
George IV. c. 44 (1822) ; 6 William IV. (1836).
Another Trust of which a printed record is available is that of the roads
about Exeter ; see A Turnpike Key, or an Account of the Proceedings of the
Exeter Turnpike Trustees, 1753-1784, by W. Buckingham, 1885.
216 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
powers were, by a new Local Act, transferred to a body of some
three hundred Commissioners or Trustees, whose names — care-
lessly recited in the Act in approximately alphabetical order —
appear to include, besides all the local Justices of the Peace,
practically all the clergy and resident gentry, and, we imagine,
also all the more substantial professional men, yeomen, tenant
farmers and tradesmen of the district — in fact, everybody who
was judged worth a thousand pounds, which was then the
qualification. 1 At the first meeting after the obtaining of the
Act about fifty Trustees attended ; 2 one baronet, five " esquires,"
five clergymen, and the remainder designated in the minute-book
either by the humbler prefix of " Mr.," or by Christian and
surname only, without any prefix whatever — a fact which we
translate to mean that the majority were farmers, tradespeople
and others considered by the clerk as being below the gentry.
The Lord of the Manor was appointed Treasurer, 3 and we find
him serving in this capacity for a whole generation. The local
firm of attorneys were appointed " joint clerks," at a guinea
per meeting, with ten shillings for their expenses. A Surveyor
was retained at a yearly fee of £25. For the next thirty years
we see the whole body of Trustees summoned to frequent meetings
— sometimes one a fortnight — where the little knot, who alone
habitually attend, struggle with all the business of arranging
where the toll-gates are to be placed, appointing their own toll-
gatherers (at seven shillings a week !), 4 or letting the tolls to the
highest bidder, suppressing such nuisances as hogs roaming on
the roads, ordering repairs, or putting the maintenance of the
road out to contract for one or more years. For a whole genera-
tion there is no committee of management, and the executive
authority is wielded by the Treasurer, sometimes accompanied
by a Trustee living in the neighbourhood. One of the constant
difficulties was the loss of revenue by exemptions and composi-
tions. Between 1769 and 1789 there seem to have been always
from a score to as many as fifty " compounders," who paid from
5s. 3d. to 21s. each a year, for exemption from all tolls on theni-
1 The list includes one peer, one Knight of the Bath, eight baronets, several
Knights and " Honourablcs," about forty clergymen, and half a dozen dootoiB
"f medicine.
2 Minutes of the Epping and Ongar Highway Trust, nt;0-lS70, by B.
Winstone, 1891, p. 93.
3 Ibid, pp. 94-95. * Ibid. p. 152.
THE EPPING AND ONGAR TRUST 217
selves, their horses, their carriages, their families and their
servants. The Treasurer himself set the example by getting all
his extensive establishment freed for a guinea a year. 1 The
Surveyor, who had his residence in the neighbourhood, and
appears to have carried on some sort of contractor's business,
assumed, until 1775, that all his " waggons, carts, and carriages "
were exempted by virtue of his office. 2 Not until 1789 do the
Trustees seem to have realised how seriously their revenue was
being curtailed by these nominal compositions, and they then
resolved " that it will be very beneficial to the Trust not to
permit any persons to compound for their tolls in future." 3
The list of compositions thereupon disappears from the minutes.
But this self-denying ordinance was vehemently objected to by
some of the Trustees ; and tr^e Treasurer himself, who profited
more than any one else by commuting, insisted on the resolution
being rescinded. Within a year he carried his point, subject
only to the composition rates being doubled ; and the list of
compounders reappears in the minutes. 4 During these first
thirty years, the active Trustees, evidently a little knot of local
residents, displayed a continuous small activity in widening the
road, levelling steep ascents and making better connections from
point to point. Sometimes they put the work out to contract ;
sometimes they did it themselves by direct employment, both
systems proving equally unsatisfactory. What was constant
was their reliance on the surveys and reports of individual
members of their own body, 5 supplemented by no better advice
than they could get from the person whom they called their
Surveyor, and who was only distinguished by the stipend of £25
a year from being what we should now regard as a humble sort
of contractor. Very frequently he undertook to carry out the
specific improvement required for a lump sum. At other times
the Trustees gave him thirty shillings a week for superintending
1 Minutes of the Epping and Ongar Highway Trust, 1769-1870, by
B. Winstone, 1891, p. 103.
2 Ibid. pp. 106-107. s Ibid . p. 154.
* Ibid. pp. 154-156. We learn that, in 1764, the " compositions " of the
Marylebone, Islington and Kensington Turnpike Trusts made up nearly 7 per
cent of the revenue (Report of House of Commons Committee on the Applica-
tion of Money . . . for repairing particular roads, 1765).
6 As late as 1806, on so important a road as that between Manchester and
Oldham, we see the Turnpike Trustees appointing their own members, by
twos, " Surveyors and Superintendents " of definite portions of the road (MS.
Minutes, Manchester and Oldham Turnpike Trust, 2nd July 1806).
218 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
the labourers whom they themselves paid. When the work was
undertaken for a lump sum, it happens more than once that it
is subsequently complained of as badly done or left altogether
unfinished. When the Trustees had their own labourers under
such superintendence, the work invariably proved to cost enorm-
ously more than had been anticipated. These administrative
failures led, first to repeated changes of Surveyor, and presently,
after the exhaustion of the original impetus, to an abandonment
of the task in despair, practically no important improvements
being undertaken for a whole generation. At length in 1830,
when the Trustees nerved themselves to renewed activity, they
began by engaging Macadam as consulting surveyor, 1 whose
reputation as a roadmender was then at its height ; and we may
leave them in his hands, at last making a scientific survey of
their whole road, borrowing £22,000 on the security of the tolls, 2
expending this sum freely on improvements under his skilful
guidance, and apparently making a good job of the business.
It would be unfair to imply that the Epping and Ongar
Turnpike Trust represented the high-water mark of turnpike
administration. We have, by chance, an elaborate printed
report, for instance, of a committee of the Hammersmith and
Brentford Turnpike Trust in the year 1800 ; a document which
reveals no small amount of administrative organisation, an
experienced staff, and upright and thoughtful Trustees. This
Trust let its tolls, with due precautions against fraud, for a large
annual sum, the Trustees devoting all their attention to the
maintenance and; improvement of their highway, which, as the
first stage out of London on the main Great Western Road, was,
at that date, one of the busiest thoroughfares in the world, along
which, it was said later, a fully laden stage-coach passed every
six minutes day and night, throughout the year. 3 We gather
that the Trustees not only met regularly as a body, but also
appointed an Administrative Committee, which inspected every
inch of the road. Their meetings were always attended, not by
their Law Clerk, but also by their Surveyor, from whom they
1 Minutes of the Epping and Ongar Highway Trust, by B. Winstonc, 1891,
p. 199. 2 Ibid. pp. 200, 202.
3 In 1834 there were on this road 115 lines of eoaches, doing over 800
journeys per week each way (The Development of Transportation in Mu,l<rn
England, by W. T. Jackman, 1916, vol. ii. p. 609 ; The Exeter Road, by C. G.
Harper, 1899 ; The Bath Road, by the same, 1899).
THE BRISTOL TRUST 219
received detailed reports. They executed their own repairs,
keeping a permanent staff of labourers, and buying their materials
by competitive tendering after public advertisement. In 1800
we find them proposing to straighten the road at a certain
dangerous corner, by acquiring houses for demolition ; to fill
up a part which is below the general level ; to cart away the road
scrapings from those parts which do not need raising ; and to
contract the side-walks where the roadway is unduly narrow.
We see them even deliberating on an experimental handing over
of a certain length of road to a professional roadmaker, in order
to let him try a new system ; the Committee suggesting an
arrangement " with some person or persons scientifically ac-
quainted with, and practically experienced in, the formation and
management of turnpike roads. Without hastily abandoning
the present system," they suggest that " a trial might be made
by the mile on certain parts of the road. Thus the Board might
be enabled to form a correct opinion of the expediency of this
mode, and of the ability of any such contractor or contractors
as might be engaged to make the experiment, and thus your
Surveyor might be improved in theory and in practice and a
desirable emulation be excited." x
The best example of enlightened administration on the part
of a Turnpike Trust is, however, that presented for the first
twenty years of the nineteenth century by the Trustees of the
roads of the Bristol District, which, with no less than 148 miles
of much frequented thoroughfares, had, since 1799, become the
largest single road authority in the kingdom. This important
Turnpike Trust had the good fortune to include among its
members John Loudon Macadam, to whose career as Justice of
the Peace and Turnpike Trustee we have, in The Parish and the
County, already alluded. We have, in our Story of the King's
Highway, described Macadam's remarkable career as a road
administrator, 2 and discussed the celebrated new technique to
which he gave his name. Here we have to notice the readiness
1 Report of Committee of Trustees of the Hammersmith and Brentford Turn-
pikes, 1800, p. 17.
2 No more detailed account of John Loudon Macadam (1756-1836) exists
than the notices in the Imperial Dictionary of Biography and the National
Dictionary of Biography ; and we have therefore specified in our Story of the
King's Highway, both the chief events of his life, and some of the materials
for the biography which is his due (pp. 135, 176, 184-185, etc.).
220 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
with which his colleagues on the Bristol District Turnpike Trust
welcomed the experience that he had gained in Ayrshire and
on his travels ; and the ease with which he was able to organise
an efficient executive under that large and unwieldy Trust. In
1810 he communicated his ideas to the Board of Agriculture,
which, under the enlightened leadership of Sir John Sinclair and
Arthur Young, was then energetically striving for a general
improvement of the roads. Macadam's proposals were in this
way brought to the notice of various Parliamentary Committees,
and extensively advertised throughout the kingdom. In 1815
his fellow Trustees begged him to take over the entire manage-
ment of their roads, and he became their surveyor at a salary
of £400 a year, which was then considered an extraordinary sum
for the office. His fame now spread far and wide, and it is, we
think, to the credit of the Turnpike Trusts that his services were
so eagerly competed for. He quickly became a general consulting
surveyor to many of the more important Trusts, and, by 1819,
was acting, with the assistance of his son, as salaried surveyor
to no fewer than " 34 different bodies of Commissioners," having
simultaneously ' 328 miles under repair " according to his
system, and another 300 miles under survey with a view to his
advising upon it. 1 We need not here pursue the story of the
improvements brought about by Macadam. What concerns
us is to emphasise the fact that the credit of recognising and
promoting his genius for road repair is to be shared between the
Bristol District Turnpike Trustees and the then Board of Agri-
culture, whilst the rapid acceptance and application of his plans,
once they were announced, must be counted as merit to the
hundreds of Turnpike Trusts, including practically all those of
any importance, by whom he was, between 1815 and his death
in 183G, so eagerly consulted.
The Commissioners of the Holyhead Road
It was not so much the imperfection of the administration of
the Turnpike Trusts, or the financial insolvency into which so
many of them had fallen, as their incapacity to provide the main
lines of national inter-communication, that led to the intervention
of the Government, in a way that came near to superseding them
1 Report of House of Commons Committee on Highways, 1819.
THE COMMISSIONERS OF THE HOLYHEAD ROAD 221
altogether by a national system of road administration. From
the very beginning of the nineteenth century the Postmaster-
General had found himself driven by the increasing postal traffic,
at a time when all mails were road-borne, to press for the improve-
ment of the main arteries of communication. We see him writing
to different Turnpike Trusts, sending his " riding surveyors "
to inspect the various routes, and even indicting the parishes
where the Trusts had failed to provide good roads. Especially
in the valleys of North Wales did these efforts prove ineffectual,
and between Shrewsbury and Holyhead the road continued so
bad as to make it in some places positively unsafe to use a mail-
coach. At last, spurred on by the Irish Members of Parliament
as well as by the Post Office, the Government agreed to propose
a vote of £20,000 towards the improvement of the Holyhead
road, as an enterprise transcending the capacity of any of the
existing Trusts. Thomas Telford, whom we have elsewhere
described building bridges for the Shropshire Quarter Sessions,
had been, since 1803, making roads in Scotland for the Commis-
sioners of Highland Roads, and in 1815 he was set to work on
the Holyhead road, under the direction of a special body of ten
Commissioners established by Act of Parliament. 1 These
Commissioners included no fewer than three Ministers of the
Crown, but the principal part was played and the work done by
an able and energetic Irish baronet, Sir Henry Parnell, who
for twenty years devoted most of his energy to the task. 2
In the annual reports of the Holyhead Road Commissioners
we see Parnell and Telford maintaining, between 1817 and 1833,
a perpetual struggle with the twenty-three separate Turnpike
Trusts, among whom the 194 miles of road were divided. The
Commissioners had no authority to supersede these Trusts.
Each of them had to be separately argued with, and persuaded
to allow Telford to execute the works necessary to improve
its few miles of line. The seventeen English Trusts were left un-
disturbed in their nominal authority. In nearly all of them
Telford managed to get a free hand for his alterations, and when
1 The Story of the King's Highway, by S. and B. Webb, 1913, pp. 103,
182-183 ; 55 George III. c. 152, 1815.
2 Sir Henry Parnell (1776-1842) deserves a biography, which, apart from
the entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, does not appear to have
been written. We give, in our Story of the King's Highway, 1913, pp. 184-187,
a summary of his career, with a list of his works.
222 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
the work was completed the Trustees were required to add 50 per
cent to their tolls, and to pay the amount of this surtax to the
Commissioners. With the six little Welsh Trusts, controlling
the most difficult 85 miles of the line, more drastic measures had
to be taken. By one means or another Sir Henry Parnell, who
devoted the spring of 1818 to attending their meetings, managed
to induce them to allow their Trusts to be merged by Act of
Parliament in a single new body of fifteen Commissioners, who
were expressly required by their Act to employ a professional
civil engineer as their surveyor. 1 Under Telford's superintend-
ence an entirely new system of road management was introduced.
The 85 miles of road were divided among three assistant surveyors,
each having under him about half a dozen foremen, and each of
these again being made definitely and permanently responsible for
four or five miles of road, with a standing gang of hired labourers
under him. All this work took both time and money. But so
successful were its earlier stages that Parliament voted larger
and larger annual grants and loans, and devolved greater and
greater powers upon the Holyhead Road Commissioners, until,
by 1830, more than three-quarters of a million had been thus
allocated. In return for this large sum the Commissioners of
the Holyhead Road, through Telford's engineering skill and
Sir Henry Parnell' s energy, had reconstructed a continuous line
of 194 miles of road between London and Holyhead, which,
under what was virtually the management of a Government
department, could be claimed as a model of the most " perfect
roadmaking that has ever been attempted in any country " ;
and was, at any rate, the best piece of land travelling in the
Britain of its time. 2
1 59 George III. c. 30 (Shrewsbury and Bangor Turnpike Act, 1819).
2 For the Commissioners of the Holyhead Road, sec the account in our
Story < if the King's Highway, 1913, pp. 167-171, 182. The principal authorities
are the various statutes, the numerous reports of Parliamentary Committees
and the occasional discussions in Hansard between 1810 and 1833 ; the series
of Reports by tho Commissioners ; Voyages dans la Grande Bretagne, by Baron
I lharlea Dupin, 1824, vol. v. " Voies Publiques," pp. 41-47 ; A Treatise on Roads,
by Sir Henry Parnell, 1st edition, 1833, 2nd edition, 1838 ; Life of Tkotnas Telford,
bj himself, edited by John Rickman, 1838: Lives of the. Engineers, by Samuel
Smiles, 1801, vol. ii. ; Roadmaking and Maintenance, by Thomas Aitken, 1900,
pp. 14-20 ; The Unli/huii! Road, by ('. (!. Harper, 1902. The Commission nras
merged in the Office of Woods and Forests by an Act of 3 & 4 William IV.
(1833).
THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE AND MACADAM 225
The Board of Agriculture and Macadam
Meanwhile another department of the National Government
had been bestirring itself in the attempt to get a better adminis-
tration of the roads. The Board of Agriculture, inspired by
the practical genius of Sir John Sinclair, Bart. (1754-1835) and
Arthur Young, had, from 1794 onwards, been incidentally re-
porting on the unsatisfactory condition of the English highways
and constantly pressing for their improvement. Early in the
Session of 1806 Sir John Sinclair, the Chairman of the Board,
laid before the House of Commons a Bill for reforming highway
administration generally, a step which produced, not an Act,
but the first of the series of Parliamentary Committees on roads
to which we have already referred. In the proceedings of the
Committees of 1806, 1808, 1809, and 1811 we see Sir John Sinclair
inviting communications from Justices of the Peace, Turnpike
Trustees, County Surveyors and all sorts of cranks and en-
thusiasts ; and getting these, with other materials, sifted by
the staff of the Board of Agriculture for presentation to the
committees. Among the communications addressed to the
Chairman of the Board of Agriculture there came, in 1810, a
long memorandum from a fellow-Scotsman, one John Loudon
Macadam, giving it as his opinion that the whole system of
roadmaking was fundamentally erroneous, and begging to be
allowed to bring under public notice a new plan which he " had
been long endeavouring to get . . . fairly tried." " Sir John, 1 '
we are told in his Memoirs, " being pleased with the suggestions
in his letter, resolved to bring them under the notice of a
Parliamentary Committee on Highways, which was then sitting,
and of which Sir John Sinclair was Chairman. To give the new
method a better chance of success (he) caused the information
sent by Mr. Macadam to be arranged and condensed, and had
it printed in the Appendix to the Report of the Committee."
From this time onward, until his death in 1836, Macadam
occupied, towards successive Parliamentary Committees on
general road administration, much the same position of expert
authority as did Thomas Telford in those concerned with the
Scottish and Holyhead roads. And it is thus to Macadam, rather
than to Telford, that we owe such modicum of reform as was
224 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
effected in the general law and administration of roads between
1810 and 1835.
We need not describe the system of roadmaking introduced
by Macadam, nor the extraordinary vogue that it gained between
1820 and 1840, which we have sufficiently dealt with in another
volume. 1 But besides the improvements in the administration
of many Turnpike Trusts that he and his son set going, under
the fostering influence of the Board of Agriculture, we have to
record the movement promoted at the same time for a general
consolidation of Turnpike Trusts, and an improvement in their
professional staffs. Successive House of Commons Committees
of 1819, 1820 and 1821, besides testifying to the genius of Mac-
adam, strongly urged the appointment by Quarter Sessions of
one or more County Surveyors, who should superintend and
1 The Story of the King's Highway, 1913, pp. 171-175. The distinctive
feature of Macadam's system was to abstain from the use of clay, dirt, or even
pebbles, but " to put broken stone on a road, which shall unite by its own
angles, so as to form a solid hard surface " — to substitute " small angular
stones, prepared from larger pieces, for the large rounded stones then generally
made use of in road construction " — and to dispense with " binding material "
or any " mixture of earth, clay, chalk or other matter that will imbibe water
and be affected by frost " {Roadmaking and Maintenance, by Thomas Aitken.
1907, p. 12 ; see Cresy's Encyclopaedia of Civil Engineering, 1847 ; also Report
of House of Commons Committee on the Highways of the Kingdom, 1819).
It. L. Edgeworth, on the contrary, " recommended that the interstices should
lie lilled up with small gravel or sharp sand," a practice which, though it was
condemned by Macadam, is now adopted by the best surveyors (The Construc-
tion of Roads and Streets, by Henry Law and D". Kinnear Clark, 1887, p. 9).
' Telford's name is associated with the system of handset stones as a pave-
ment foundation on which the top metal or wearing surface is placed. . . .
Macadam was satisfied with laying the metalling ditectly on the surface of
the ground, after the irregularities had been levelled, and side ditches formed.
... A system of bottoming roads combining the methods practised by Telford
and Macadam has long been adopted," though the use of the steam-roller has
permitted the application of water, which was to Macadam anathema (Road-
making and Maintenance, by T. Aitken, 1900, pp. 249, 251, 253 ; see also The
Municipal and Sanitary Engineer's Handbook, by H. Percy Boulnois, 1883);
and recently the use of tar, to both bind and render impervious the surface.
Not i inly Telford, but also, it is said, " Rennie had practised the same method
of making roads over his bridges long before " Macadam's publications (Lints
<>f tin Engineers, by Samuel Smiles, 1861, vol. ii. p. 185). So, also, it is said,
did Abercromby, who constructed admirable roads in Scotland ; and various
<h roadmakers, notably the great Pierre Tresaguet , whom Turgot employed
in 17(i4 (The King's Highway, the Nature, Purpose and Development of Roads
and Road Systems, by Reginald Ryves, 1911 ; The Art of Roadmaking, by Frost,
pp. 159, 160; Highways and Horses, by Athol Maudslay, 1888, p. 53). But
in 1830 the French Government officially adopted Macadam's system, which
received the highest praise in L843 from Dumas, the engineer in chief of the
department of Ponts el Chanssees (The King's Highway, etc.. by Reginald
Ryves, 1911, p. 8
CONSOLIDATION OF ACTS 225
manage all the turnpike roads within each county, under the
direction and for the benefit of the several Trusts. The Com-
mittees recommended also both the consolidation of the confused
law about turnpikes and the combination of the Trusts them-
selves.
It must be said that the legislative results with regard to
Turnpike Trusts were disappointingly small. It was not found
possible even to remedy the more important defects of the general
turnpike law. The various Public General Acts on the subject
were, it is true, strung together in 1822 into mechanical unity
by a consolidating Act, carried through Parliament by Sir
Frankland Lewis ; but this left the real complications practically
unchanged, and was itself promptly overlain by a new set of
little amending Acts. 1 In spite of repeated recommendations
Parliament failed, until 1831, to devise any remedy for the
trouble and expense annually wasted over the periodical renewal
of the Local Acts of the eleven hundred Turnpike Trusts ; or to
protect their promoters from being mulcted in absurdly heavy
fees by the officials of the two Houses of Parliament ; and even
1 The general legislation about Turnpike Trusts between 1822 and 1834
comprised the 3 George IV. c. 126 (General Turnpike Act of 1822) ; amended
by 4 George IV. c. 16 (1823) ; 5 George IV. c. 69 (1824) ; 7 & 8 George IV.
c. 24 (1827) ; 9 George IV. c. 77 (1828) ; 1 & 2 William IV. c. 25 (1831) ;
3 & 4 William IV. c. 78 (1833) ; 4 & 5 William IV. c. 81 (1834). In 1824 a
further consolidation was attempted by J. Cripps, M.P., himself a Justice of
the Peace and Turnpike Trustee, who brought in a Bill to include in a single
statute the entire law relating to highways, parochial as well as turnpike.
This was deprecated by Sir Frankland Lewis as unwise, and was not pressed
(Hansard, 25th March 1824).
On the vexed question of Parliamentary costs, it was pointed out in 1827
that Bills for the consolidation of Turnpike Trusts have " hitherto been visited
. . . with the heaviest charges. Turnpike Bills generally have been always
subjected to double House Fees, on some principle not sufficiently intelligible
to your Committee ; but when Trusts are consolidated, or when roads are
divided into two or more districts . . . the House Fee is again doubled or
trebled, and so on, as the case may be ; the Committee Fees are also increased,
though not in the same proportion." Yet, as was vainly urged, Turnpike
Bills, being really measures for the public advantage, not for individual profit,
might properly be relieved from all fees. The limitation of time inserted in
them was " a precautionary provision of the Legislature, not at all requisite
for the purposes of the Trust, but on the contrary, rather injurious to its
interests, having been introduced for the sole benefit of the public, with a view
to procure a periodical revision of the powers and proceedings of the Trust."
All renewal Bills should therefore be exempt from the charges on Private Bills
(Report of House of Commons Committee on Turnpike Trusts Renewal Bills,
1827 ; see also A Second Supplement to the General Turnpike Road Acts for
1827, by J. Bateman, 1827, p. Ill ; Municipal Origins, by F. H. Spencer,
1911, pp. 77-84).
Q
226 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
in 1831 could find no more efficient reform than the inclusion,
each year, of all the expiring Acts in one annual renewal Bill. 1
No attempt was made by Parliament to effect any general reform
in the administration of the existing Turnpike Trusts. It was
all very well for Committee after Committee to urge the desir-
ability of " consolidation of areas," but no Committee made any
practical proposal for bringing it about. The great difference
in financial position between the various Trusts, and the natural
reluctance of every solvent body to take over the liabilities of
a bankrupt concern, prevented anything of the kind taking place.
The obvious, and perhaps the only possible, way of surmounting
the financial entanglement of the thousands of separate mortgages
of tolls remaining unpaid, of the great and growing arrears of
interest owing by some of the Trusts, and of the pledging of
particular tolls for separate debts, was compulsorily to amal-
gamate all the various Trusts, so as to give each of the mortgagees
and other creditors a superior security, and so as to bring the
total expenditure within the aggregate income. This meant,
in effect, the merging of them all into a national department of
toll-supported roads, a project frequently recommended by
outside critics and irresponsible advisers. But under George the
Fourth, as under George the Third, no Ministry was ever found
willing to undertake such a reform, and no Parliament to sanction
such an increase in the executive power and Government patron-
age. As an alternative to any scheme of consolidation under a
national department, some substantial progress might have been
made in compulsorily consolidating the Trusts of particular
districts, a policy which had been strenuously recommended by
the Committee of 1819, and its successors. A certain amount of
this district consolidation presently got effected. We shall
describe the successful combination in 1827 of the Metropolitan
roads north of the Thames. But besides this great consolidation,
others were made in different parts of the Kingdom to the great
improvement of the administration. The 63 miles of the Surrey
and Sussex Turnpike Trust — the aggregation second in import-
ance in revenue (£19,000) to that of the Metropolitan roads —
1 The first of the long series of annual Turnpike Trust Renewal Acts was
1 & 2 William IV. c. 6, 1831, entitled "An Act for continuing until the
30th day of June 1832 the several Acts for regulating the Turnpike Roads
in Great Britain which will expire at the end of the present session of Parlia-
ment."
AMALGAMATION OF TRUSTS 227
were steadily improved by the force of example. The same
may be said of the Middlesex and Essex Trust (£11,000) with its
31 miles, and of the New Cross Trust (£14,000) with its 49 miles,
both yielding exceptionally large toll receipts. ' The whole
of the south and south-western roads," as we learn incidentally
from the historian of our taxes, " benefited by the impulse to
locomotion in those parts, due to the patronage of Brighton "
by George the Fourth. The much frequented roads about
Bristol, where, already by 1799, the consolidation of small
Trusts had put 172 miles under one management (revenue
£15,000), were brought to a high state of excellence by the
Macadams, and vied with those of the Bath Turnpike Trust
(51 miles of very remunerative roads yielding £8000). Other
extensive Trusts were those of Worcester (160 miles, £5000),
Hereford (156 miles, £5000), Exeter (146 miles, £6000), and
Alston in Cumberland (130 miles, £3000) ; whilst the Manchester
and Buxton Trust, with only. 45 miles of road, stood sixth in
aggregate receipts (£8000). These eleven great Trusts managed,
in the aggregate, 1165 miles of road (or about 6 per cent of the
total mileage), but collected no less than £166,000 in revenue
(or about 12 per cent of the whole turnpike receipts). Elsewhere,
especially in the more remote and less frequented parts of the
Kingdom, the thousand and odd little Trusts remained uncon-
solidated, 1 each administering its 10 or 20 miles of road,
and its thousand or two pounds of revenue, by its miscellaneous
fifty or a hundred Trustees ; gradually executing, it is true, the
most elementary improvements, but for the most part squander-
ing their tolls in extravagant administrative expenses, and piling
up their debts until actual insolvency beset them, much as they
had done for the previous couple of generations.
1 The multiplicity of Trusts was, indeed, carried to an absurd extreme.
Within the municipal boundaries of Leeds there were 46 miles of turnpike
roads and 30 tollgates, belonging to no fewer than 18 different Trusts, and
collecting, in 1842, £23,251 per annum (Suggestions for consolidating the funds
and management of turnpike roads within the Borough of Leeds, by Richard
Bayldon, 1843, p. 11). Within the boundaries of the Parliamentary Borough
of Stroud (Gloucestershire) there were 13 different Trusts (Rebecca at Stroud,
or a few words about the Turnpike Trusts, by David Ricardo, 1847). For an
early advocacy of combination see the pamphlet, A Letter to the Inhabitants of
Hertford, about 1771, in British Museum volume 8245, bb. 14. It was, more
than anything else, this multiplicity of Trusts, and an excessive multiplication
of tollgates that produced, in 1842-1843, the Rebecca riots in South Wales
(Rebecca and lier Daughters, by Henry Tobit Evans, 1910).
228 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
The Commissioners of Metropolitan Turnpike Roads
It was in London that the inefficiency of the Turnpike Trust
became least endurable. The working constitution of the
Turnpike Trust, like that of the Parish, the County * and the
Court of Sewers, had completely broken down under the excep-
tional conditions of the Metropolitan area. The peculiar con-
stitutional characteristic of the Turnpike Trust was, as we have
indicated, its large and indiscriminate membership. "When, as
in the rural districts, this meant the inclusion within the Trust
of practically every resident above the manual working and
small shop-keeping classes, it provided, at any rate, a kind of
popular control and popular assent absent from the more ex-
clusive administration of the Close Vestry, the Municipal
Corporation or the County. In the wilderness of the Metropolis,
however, the large and indiscriminate membership of a Turnpike
Trust secured neither popular assent nor popular control, whilst
it served to accelerate the tendency, which marked nearly all
the London governing bodies of the period, for the social status
and personal character of the members steadily to sink to an
ever lower level. The main roads in Middlesex, outside the City
of London, were under the care of fourteen different Turnpike
Trusts. Amid the many tens of thousands of residents of
Marylebone and Paddington, Chelsea and Kensington, at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, the few hundreds who sat
on the Turnpike Trusts were but an unknown handful. As in
the cases of the Metropolitan Close Vestries, the Middlesex
Commission of the Peace or the Westminster Court of Sewers,
the great people who figured in the list never deigned to attend
the meetings, and the administration was, without publicity,
without practical responsibility and even without audit, left in
the hands of the smaller folk to whom the patronage, the per-
quisites and the opportunities for profit were an irresistible
attraction. Already, in 1765, we see the Kensington Turnpike
Trust squandering an almost incredible number of loads of gravel
on Piccadilly, because one of the active Trustees himself supplied
this material at a non-competitive price, whilst " all the car-
penter's work," whatever this included, was secured at profitable
1 The Parish and the County, by S. and 13. Webb, 1907.
THE COMMISSIONERS OF METROPOLITAN ROADS 229
rates by the partner of another active Trustee. 1 With the
enormous growth of the wheeled traffic and the revenue from
tolls, the various Turnpike Trusts to which had been committed
the roads radiating from Charing Cross and St. Paul's, evidently
went from bad to worse. It was given in evidence by such
competent witnesses as the Postmaster-General's Superintendent
of Mail-Coaches and the leading coach proprietors, that the high
roads just outside the centre of the city were far worse than those
elsewhere ; that ten horses had to be used to do the work of
eight ; that these horses lasted only three or four years, as com-
pared with six years elsewhere ; and that the mail-coaches
occasionally lost twenty minutes in labouring through a few
score yards of soft road. 2 From 1819 onward Committee after
Committee of the House of Commons insisted that something
must be done to remedy the evils " of the numerous small Trusts
. . . most inconveniently divided " ; the " frequency of turn-
pike gates," and the consequent " great interruption of the
traffic," under which the Metropolis suffered. An energetic
attempt by a knot of private members, headed by Davies Gilbert
and Sir Henry Parnell, to roll up into a single body all the various
Trusts surrounding the capital — a reform to which the Com-
mittees of 1819 and 1821 had attached particular importance in
the hope of rendering " the roads round the Metropolis," on
which an " immense revenue " was " collected from the public,"
a " pattern for the kingdom," so that " the spirit of improvement
radiating from this centre may . . . spread with rapidity
throughout the country." This bill was an extensive proposal,
which would have wiped out more than fifty separate Trusts in
Essex, Middlesex, Surrey and Kent, comprising several thousands
of Trustees, who were to be permitted to select a small body
from amongst themselves as the new Trustees. Though the
second reading was carried by a large majority, the measure
naturally met with " a very great opposition by the several
Trusts that were proposed to be consolidated, and there was no
party possessing the means to forward the measure." Left
entirely to the energy of a few private members, without Govern-
ment support, it was obstructed, postponed and eventually
1 Report of House of Commons Committee appointed to enquire into the
application of money ... for repairing any particular highway, 1765.
2 See also the facts stated in an article on road-making in London Magazine,
August 1828.
230 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
defeated in the House of Commons by 72 votes to 71. But the
question was not allowed to drop. In 1825 Lord Lowther
brought before the House of Commons an amazing indictment of
the Trustees of all these Metropolitan Trusts, which collected,
he said, over £200,000 a year in tolls, and were honeycombed by
corruption on a large scale, the Trustees giving each other
profitable contracts and appointments, and permitting each
other to lend money to the Trusts at 10 per cent interest — an
indictment, supported on the one hand by the speeches of Joseph
Hume, and on the other by the writings of William Cobbett,
who alleged also that excessive and illegal tolls were exacted. 1
These complaints led at last, in 1826, to the supersession of the
fourteen Metropolitan Trusts North of the Thames — governing
131 miles of road from Uxbridge to the River Lea, and levying
£75,000 a year in tolls — by a new body of Commissioners of
eminence and distinction, carefully selected by the Ministry of
the day, and presided over permanently by Lord Lowther, who,
chosen by the Government, and working in constant communi-
cation with the Postmaster-General, applied himself assiduously
for no less than thirty years to the management of this new
department. Though the forms of a Turnpike Trust were
retained, we gather that the " gentlemen of eminence and dis-
tinction " left the whole business to the Chairman and the
salaried officers. James Macadam (1786-1852), the son and
partner of the celebrated road-mender, was immediately
appointed " Surveyor General of the Metropolitan Roads," an
adequate official staff was engaged, the main thoroughfares of
traffic were put into good order, the working expenses were
greatly reduced, the inconvenient toll gates were removed to
better sites and diminished in number, the tolls were gradually
reduced in amount as the debt was paid off, and the whole
service was run on lines of bureaucratic efficiency, rendering to
Parliament the homage of the publication of an annual report
and statement of accounts. 2
1 This was a subject of complaint by others. One writer of 1834 declared
that " the gross oppression committed by Road Trusts in the mode and manner
<>f imposing and levying the road tolls greatly surpasses their mismanagement "'
(.1 Treatise on Internal Intercourse and Communication in Civilized States, and
particularly in Great Britain, by Thomas Grahamc, 1834, p. 22).
2 As to these Commissioners of Metropolitan Turnpike Roads, see our Story
of the King 1 8 Highway, 1013. pp. 177-179, 190; the Reports of House of Commons
Committees on Highways and Turnpike Roads, 1819, L820, 1821; Hansard,
THE COMING OF THE RAILWAY 231
The Coming of the Railway
By 1827, therefore, in two most important cases, the Turnpike
Trusts had been superseded by newly appointed bodies of Crown
nominees, which were only slightly removed from being depart-
ments of the national government, working in close connection
with the General Post Office. How far the example of the
Metropolitan Eoads Commission and the Holyhead Road Com-
mission would have been followed, and the local Turnpike Trusts
swallowed up in a national system, if we had continued to rely
on the King's Highway as our only means of communication,
affords material for interesting speculation. Already, by 1827,
Telford had been set by the Postmaster-General to survey the
whole line of the Great North Road from London to Edinburgh,
and had prepared the plan of a new route, which would have
saved twenty miles in distance, and substituted, for the existing
windings, a hundred miles of road between York and Peter-
borough as straight as a French chaussee. A Committee of the
House of Commons recommended the Government to appoint a
Commission to make this road, on the precedent of that of
Holyhead, and a Bill for the purpose was actually introduced in
1830. It had, however, to face a storm of opposition, and made
no progress. 1 The reformers along this line would have had to
June and July 1820, February and April 1821, 5th May 1824, 17th February
1825, 31st March 1829, 12th March 1830; the statutes 7 George IV. c. 142
(1826) and 10 George IV. c. 59 (1829); Morning Chronicle, 6th April 1825;
Times, 10th November 1826 and 12th June 1828 ; House of Commons Journals,
12th March 1830 ; evidence of Viscount Lowther and James Macadam hi
Report of House of Lords Committee on Turnpike Trusts, 1833 ; Treatise on
Road Legislation and Maintenance, by Richard Bayldon, 1857, p. 23 ; and,
above all, the 46 annual Reports to Parliament of the Commissioners them-
selves (1827-1872).
Notwithstanding the inroads made on their tolls by the competition of the
new railways, the Commissioners managed to pay off all their debt by 1856,
besides executing many road improvements. In 1864, at the instance of the
Commissioners themselves, all their roads within the district of the Metro-
politan Board of Works were freed from toll and transferred to the respective
parishes (26 & 27 Vict. c. 78, Metropolitan Turnpikes Act, 1863). The Com-
mission was terminated, and its remaining roads were freed, by a clause in the
General Turnpike Acts Continuance Act, 1871. It thus came to an end in
1872, a few weeks after the death of its assiduous chairman, whose portrait
was given in the Illustrated London News for 16th March 1872 (see also Bourke's
History of White's, 1892, vol. ii. p. 116).
1 Report of House of Commons Committee on the State of the Northern
roads, 1830 ; House of Commons Journals, May and June 1830 ; Hansard,
3rd June 1830 ; Lives of the Engineers, by Samuel Smiles, 1861, vol. ii. pp.
433-434.
232 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
contend, not only with vested interests of all the local Trusts,
but also with the current objections to any increase in Govern-
ment expenditure, Government patronage, and Government
control. On the other hand, short of the actual transfer of
turnpike administration from the domain of local to that of
central government, there seemed no possibility of effectually
reforming the system. This was, in fact, a case in which the
favourite panacea of the Whigs and Radicals appeared not to
apply. So long as the road revenue continued to be raised by
tolls, there was no constitutional argument in favour of substi-
tuting election by the local inhabitants for any other system of
choosing Turnpike Trustees. The example of some Welsh and
other rural Trusts had demonstrated that the pecuniary interests
of the local residents were often quite opposed to those of the
through travellers who paid most of the tolls. As the payers of
tolls did not constitute a possible local constituency, the only way
in which Taxation and Representation could be made to go hand
in hand seemed the assumption of the entire service by the
national government, representing the whole body of road users.
For such a supersession of local government public opinion was
in no way prepared. Even national superintendence was
refused. In vain did Sir Henry Parnell propose, in 1833, that all
Turnpike Trusts should be placed under the control of the
Commissioners of Land Revenue, seeing that the latter were,
under an Act of 1833, just taking over the duties of the Office of
Works and the Commissioners of the Holyhead roads. 1 Another
1 The alternative of a national department of roads, acting in conjunction
with Local Authorities, had been suggested long before by two able writers,
but seems to have been, in the seventeenth century as in the eighteenth and
nineteenth, regarded as unworthy of serious consideration. Littleton, in 1692,
had a complicated scheme based on finance. " It is therefore humbly pro-
posed (1) that a constant yearly tax be laid upon land of 4d. in the £ ; (2) that
I he collectors of it in each parish pay the one moiety to the parish surveyor
and the other moiety to the Surveyor of the Hundred; (3) that the Surveyor
of the Hundred employ the one-half of his moiety upon the ways within his
limit and pay over the other half to the Surveyor for the County ; (4) that the
County Surveyor remit one-quarter part of his money to the Surveyor-General
of England; employing the residue upon the bridges and <_ r reat roads of the
county : (5) that the Surveyor-General employ his whole money in the London
roads, the whole Kingdom doing concerned in them " (.4 Proposal for Maintain-
ing and Repairing the Highways, by ES. Littleton, 1692, p. 2). A national
department of roads was proposed by Daniel Defoe in 1697 : an elaborate
projeol for a complete system of road-making and maintenance for the whole
kingdom, by a national commission of fifteen members, to be aided by ten
■tilers added l>y the nullity in which they were for the time being at work:
THE TRIALS AT RAINHILL 233
way out lay in a direction as yet unthought of. It did not occur to
any one in 1820-1830 that the splendid Turnpike Roads along the
main arteries of national traffic could ever be merged in the petty
local administration of the miserable bye-lanes and minor high-
ways through which they ran ; x or that the one and a half
millions sterling of annual toll revenue could be abandoned and
replaced by a more than equivalent addition to the local rates.
Yet, as we now know, that was the solution destined within
another generation to be adopted, the first unconscious step
being taken in these very years, as we have shown in our Story
of the King's Highway, in the General Highway Act of 1835.
Meanwhile, however, the success of the new railways, and the
astonishing results of the trial of the locomotive engines at Rain-
hill in 1829, diverted all public interest from the Turnpike
Trusts ; producing even so strong a general impression that road
traffic was about to become a thing of the past that all projects
the construction of new roads being done under Parliamentary powers, and
executed, partly by pressed labour, partly by convict labour, partly out of the
proceeds of surplus lands enclosed and sold, and partly by a general assessment
(An Essay upon Projects, by D(aniel De) F(oe), 1697, pp. 68-112). It is
interesting to see the turning towards nationalisation of some early Benthamite.
In an article in the Westminster Review, then under the virtual editorship of
John Stuart Mill, in commenting on Baron Dupin's praise of the turnpikes,
the writer proceeds : " We doubt the whole system. In spite of our natural
or acquired fears of government and jobs we still think that the whole system
of roads ought to be one. . . . It is a national, not a private concern. There
is no reason why one road should possess superfluous wealth, while another is
starved. . . . There is no reason why enormous balances should remain in the
hands of treasurers and attorneys for the purpose of jobbing with them in the
funds. It is not a cheap administration ; it is not an effectual administra-
tion " (Westminster Review, October 1825, vol. iv. p. 344). The Edinburgh
Review, on the other hand, economically more orthodox, was recommending,
in 1819, giving to the Commissioners of Turnpike Trusts the stimulus of private
profit. " Let the right of levying certain tolls be granted to the subscribers ;
the surplus, after paying all outgoings, to be divided as profit " (Edinburgh
Review, October 1819).
1 It is remarkable how little attention was paid at this period to the four-
fifths of highway mileage that was not under Turnpike Trusts. An able Berk-
shire Justice published an anonymous pamphlet in 1825, entitled Highways
Improved. The Act of 1835 (5 & 6 William IV. c. 50) became the subject of
many text-books, such as The General Highway Act, 1835, by Joseph Bateman,
1835 ; The Present General Laws for Regulating Highways in England, by
W. F. A. Delane, 1835 ; The General Highway Act of 5 & 6 William, IV. c. 50,
by Leonard Shelf ord, 1835 ; A Familiar Abridgement of the General Highways
Act, by F. A. Fry, 1836 ; The Office of a Surveyor of the Highways, by a Magis-
trate, 1836. Particulars of the history of these parish highways will be found
in The Story of the King's Highway, 1913.
234 THE TURNPIKE TRUSTS
of reform were laid aside. 1 How the Turnpike Trusts lingered
on for another generation, many more of them becoming hope-
lessly insolvent : how the Government neglected to deal with
them, either in the Highways Act of 1835 or in the ensuing
decades; how, in 1842-1843, South Wales flared up in a genuine
little rebellion against the turnpike exactions, which compelled
the Government to take the South Wales roads virtually under
national control ; how the English Trusts were allowed to go
from bad to worse, to the ruin of innumerable investors ; how
the House of Commons, from about 1862 onwards, took the
matter into its own hands in the absence of a Ministerial policy ;
how a Select Committee in 1864 denounced the whole system of
tolls as " unequal in pressure, costly in collection, inconvenient
to the public, and injurious as causing a serious impediment to
intercourse and traffic," and advocated at least the union of the
Trusts into larger bodies ; how from that time forth the House
successively refused to renew the terms of many of the Trusts as
they expired ; how step by step the management of the highways
was transferred to new district and county authorities, until, in
1895, the last of the road functions of the Parish and the last of
the Turnpike Trusts alike came to an end, we have told in our
Story of the King's Highway.
1 J. L. Macadam was not the only person who regarded the popular in-
fatuation for railways as a " calamity." Alexander Gordon, who published,
in 1832, An Historical and Practical Treatise upon Elemental Locomotion by
Means of Steam Carriages on Common Roads, continued to demonstrate The
Fitness of Turnpike Roads and Highways for the Most Expeditious, Safe, Con-
venient and Economical Internal Communication (1835) ; and in 1837 published
Observations addressed to those interested in either Railways or Turnpike Roads,
showing the Comparative Expedition, Safety, Convenience and Public and Private
Economy of these two kinds of roads for Internal Communication. Another pro-
jector advocated The National Waggon-Post, to travel at the rate of twenty miles
per hour, carrying One Thousand Tons Weight, all over the Kingdom uf England,
with Passengers, Goods and Slock, by (!. M. George, 1825.
CHAPTER IV
THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
We come to another, and in many respects a more interesting,
series of Statutory Local Authorities in the bodies of Trustees or
Commissioners for paving, lighting, cleansing, watching and
otherwise improving the streets of the rapidly developing urban
centres of the eighteenth century. Although they have never
yet engaged the attention of the historian, these early Local
Authorities for coping with the problems connected with the
police and public health of towns were of greater contemporary
interest than the Courts of Sewers or the Incorporated Guardians
of the Poor, or even than the Turnpike Trustees. In the ordinary
inhabitant the routine of administration of the sluices and em-
bankments excited no attention, and whilst he might grumble at
the state of the roads or the turnpike tolls, in only a minority of
places was he occasionally called upon to pay either a sewers rate
or a highway rate. To the average householder a change in the
method of " governing the poor " made practically no difference,
except in so far as it might work out in a reduction or increase in
the poor-rate. But the bodies of Police, Paving, Street, Lamp
or Improvement Trustees or Commissioners, which we have now
to describe, dealt with matters of daily life which came home to
every household ; they set going public services of an altogether
novel kind ; they introduced a new regulation of individual enter-
prise and personal behaviour ; above all, they levied on every
householder new and extra taxation constantly increasing in
amount. The establishment, between 1748 and 1835, in nearly
every urban centre, under one designation or another, of a new
statutory body — which we shall term always Improvement Com-
missioners—was, in fact, the starting-point of the great modern
235
236 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
development of town government. And it is these Improvement
Commissioners, not the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of the
old corporations, who were the progenitors of nearly all the
activities of our present municipalities.
The State of the Towns
It is difficult for us at the present day to form any adequate
idea of the state of a populous and rapidly growing town at a
time when it was without anything in the nature of municipal
government, as now understood. To begin with the houses —
springing up on all sides with mushroom-like rapidity — there were
absolutely no building regulations. Each man put up his house
where and as he chose, without regard for building-line, width of
street or access of light and air. Every householder encroached
on the thoroughfare by overhanging windows, swinging signs,
doors opening outwards, cellar-flaps habitually open, mounting
blocks and flights of steps. " Streets of projecting houses nearly
meeting at top ; rooms with small windows never meant to open ;
and dirt in all its glory, excluded every possible access of fresh
air." * Rain-water pipes were unknown, and projecting spouts
from between the gutters of the roofs poured the rain in streams
on the passers-by. The narrow ways left to foot and wheeled
traffic were unpaved, uneven, and full of holes in which the water
and garbage accumulated. Down the middle of the street ran a
series of dirty puddles, which in times of rain became a stream
of decomposing filth. Public provision for street cleansing or
the removal of refuse there was none, so that garbage and horse
dung accumulated, in places even a yard deep. 2 There were, of
course, no sewers and no water-closets ; what is not commonly
realised is that, except in the better parts of London and the
wealthier residential cities, there were neither ashpits nor privies.
nor any similar conveniences — with results that are indescribable.
Pigs roamed about the streets — the only scavengers. Every
yard and blind alley contained pigeons and poultry. Cowsheds
and slaughterhouses occupied a large portion even of the main
1 .! Philosophical Estimate of the muses, effect* and run of unirholesome nir
in largt cities, by A. Walker, 1777.
- Even in the middle of City of London, " in and about St. Paul's Church,"
we read, in 1 1 > 1 7 . that the " horsedung is a yard deep" {Th Familiar Letters
of James 1I< weU, edited by ■' x ph Jacobs, 1s<)l > , vol. i p. r>4'_').
THE STATE OF THE TOWNS 237
streets, down which the blood periodically ran in streams. At
night, when there was no moon, the streets were in pitch dark-
ness, except for an occasional lantern swinging over the door of
an energetic shopkeeper or rich householder. With this obstruc-
tion, dirt and darkness, it was perhaps a minor matter that there
was no sort of police ; outside the City of London, indeed, seldom
even a watchman dosing in his box or noisily calling the hour ; so
that, as the Islington Vestry complains in 1772, " the inhabitants
are exposed to frequent murders, robberies, burglaries and other
outrages." x
Different parishes came, of course, at different dates into this
state, according to the period at which they felt the impulse of
the new industrial conditions, under which their populations
went forward with a bound. The City of London, for instance,
had put its streets into some sort of order after the Great Fire
of 1666, but Westminster remained, at the middle of the eight-
eenth century, practically as we have described. At this date,
when Jonas Hanway began his agitation for reform, " the
carriage ways were full of cavities which harboured water and
filth. 2 The signs, extending on both sides the way into the
streets at unequal distance from the houses that they might not
intercept each other, greatly obstructed the view, and, which is
of much more consequence in a crowded city, prevented the free
circulation of the air. . . . How comfortless must be the sensa-
tions of an unfortunate female, stopped in the street on a windy
day, under a large old sign, loaded with lead and iron, in full
swing over her head, and perhaps a torrent of dirty water falling
near her from a projecting spout ornamented with the mouth and
teeth of a dragon. . . . The footpaths were universally incom-
moded, even where they were so narrow as only to admit of one
person passing at a time, by a row of posts, set on the edge next
the carriage way. He whose urgent business would not admit of
his keeping pace with the gentleman of leisure before him, turned
out between the two posts before the door of some large house
into the carriage way. When he perceived danger moving
1 Islington Local Act of 1772, preamble.
2 Another writer describes the rough and broken pavements of the West-
minster streets in 1756 as " so covered by filth as to make them scarcely visible
to the most cautious passenger by day. . . . The quantity of filth in our streets
is so great that man and beast in some places can hardly wade through it "
(A Proposal or Plan for an Act of Parliament for the Better Paving, Cleansing
and Lighting, etc., by John granger, 1756).
238 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
towards him he wished to return within the protection of the row
of posts ; but there was commonly a rail continued from the top
of one post to that of another, sometimes for several houses
together, in which case he was obliged to run back to the first
inlet, or climb over, or creep under the railing, in attempting
which lie might think himself fortunate if he escaped with no
other injury than what proceeded from dirt. If, intimidated by
the danger he escaped, he afterwards kept within the boundary
of the posts and railing, he was obliged to put aside the travellers
before him, whose haste was less urgent than his, and these
resisting, made his journey truly a warfare." x The cellar-flaps
long continued to be a source of serious danger. " A consider-
able proportion of the London poor hid themselves at nightfall
in cellars. These inhabitants of cellars were permitted to enjoy
and utilise the modicum of daylight that came to their darksome
rooms from the streets, and even to keep the flaps of their street
doors thrown back by day, for the more free admission of sun-
light during the day, provided they closed the flaps at nightfall
with proper care for the safety of pedestrians in the street. Old
vestry books show that, from time to time, Vestries republished,
by the bellman, the old standing orders for closing cellarflaps
that opened into public ways, on the approach of nightfall. But
the orders are never rigidly enforced for any considerable length
of time." 2 At Birmingham, which between 1741 and 1791
trebled its population, 3 there was, prior to 1769, as Hutton
graphically tells us, no sort of regulation. " When land is appro-
priated for a street, the builders are under no control; every
lessee proceeds according to his interest or fancy ; there is no
man to preserve order or prescribe bounds : hence arise evils
without a cure, such as a narrowness which scarcely admits light,
cleanliness, pleasure, health or use ; unnecessary hills like that
in Bull Street ; sudden falls, owing to the floor of one house
being laid three feet lower than the next, as in Coleshill Street ;
one side of a street, like the deck of a ship, ' gunnel to,' several
feet higher than the other, as in Snow Hill. . . . Hence also that
1 Bemarkable Occurrenciea in the Life of Jonas Hunvay, by John Pugh,
1787, pp. 129-131.
2 Middlesex County Records, edited by J. C. Jeaffreson, vol. iv. p. liv.
3 Hutton gives the number of houses as follows : in 1700, 2504 ; in 1731,
3717 ; in 1741, 4114 ; in 1781, 8382 ; in 1791, 12,881 (History of Birmingham,
by William Hutton, 1781, p. 77).
THE COMMISSIONERS OF SCOTLAND YARD 239
crowd of enormous bulk sashes, steps projecting from the houses
and the cellars ; buildings which, like men at a dogfight, seem
rudely to crowd before each other ; penthouses, rails, palisades,
etc., which have long called for redress." x The picture of
Birmingham at this period may be completed by a quotation from
its modern historian. " The streets . . . were narrow and
irregular ; the pavements were wretchedly imperfect ; there was
no drainage ; even the rainwater plashed off the house roofs and
lay there, with the house refuse, until it dried up. The removal
of refuse was unprovided for by any public organisation ; the
streets and roads were unswept, except by volunteers, for there
were no scavengers ; at night all was pitch dark, save for the
light of the moon or the rays of a friendly lantern, for there were
no lamps. Right in the centre of the town, New Street, one of
the principal streets, was actually entered through a narrow
gateway, and was used as a pig-market. The Bull Ring, the
only open space, was blocked by shambles and slaughterhouses,
and other offensive buildings." 2 Manchester, at the middle of
the century, seems to have excelled in filthiness. " A general
nastiness," declares a contemporary witness, " is become even
a public scandal to our town. We cannot walk' the streets
without being annoyed with such filth as is a public nuisance. . . .
We are grown infamous for a general want of good manners in
our populace. . . . Our streets are no better than a common
dunghill, and more sacred places are most shamefully polluted.
Our very churchyards are profaned with such filth as was
intended to create a detestation and abhorrence even of idol
temples. I mean they are rendered no better than errant
draught houses." 3
The Commissioners of Scotland Yard
The extensive array of bodies of Improvement Commissioners
may be said to begin with the public Act of 1662, which established
1 History of Birmingham, by William Hutton, 1781, p. 91 ; History of the
Corporation of Birmingham, by J. T. Bunce, 1878-1885, p. 46; Old and New
Birmingham, by R. K. Dent, 1819-1881, p. 137.
2 History of the Corporation of Birmingham, by J. T. Bunce, 1878-1885, p. 48.
3 Friendly advice to the Poor, written and published at the request of the late
and present Officers of the Town of Manchester, by John Clayton, M.A. (Man-
chester, 1755).
2 4 o THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
a new Local Authority in the Cities of London and Westminster. 1
Owing to the multitude of houses lately built, so the preamble
declares, and the stopping and filling the ditches and sewers,
through want of timely reparation, the common ways had become
so miry and foul as to be noisome and dangerous. Powers were
accordingly granted to a body of Commissioners, twenty-one
in number, including the Dean, the High Steward, the Deputy
Steward and two of the Chief Burgesses of Westminster. The
Commissioners were empowered to make new sewers, to enlarge
old ones and to remove nuisances. Householders were forbidden
to throw dirt or refuse of any kind into sewers or watercourses.
The Commissioners were authorised to appoint public rakers
or scavengers, w T ho were to make daily rounds with " carts,
dungpots or other fitting carriages," heralded " by bell, horn,
clapper or otherwise " making " distinct noise," so that the in-
habitants might bring out their refuse. The Commissioners
were also authorised to remove " encroachments by sheds, stalls,
balks, shops, posts or walls " projecting into the streets, and to
license the newly introduced hackney coaches. Householders
were forbidden to throw their coal-ashes and filth into the streets ;
they were to repair and maintain the surface in front of their
premises ; and they were required to hang out lighted lanterns
every night during the autumn and winter. These earliest
Commissioners were, however, not given any general rating
powers. Their duties related to regulation rather than construc-
1 Unfortunately we know little about this body (historically interesting as
being the only case in which the Cities of London and Westminster were given
a common governing authority prior to 1855), except from the Acts from 1662
to 1697, by which it was established and regulated, namely, 13 & 14 Charles II.
c. 2 ; 22 Charles II. c. 12 ; 2 William and Mary, sess. 2, c. 8 ; and 8 & 9
William III. c. 27. We have not discovered any of the archives. Evelyn
notes in his Diary (edited by W. Bray, 1850-1852) that he was chosen one of
the Commissioners for " reforming the buildings, ways, streets and incum-
brances, and regulating the hackney coaches " ; and he mentions that he went
to His Majesty's Surveyor's office in Scotland Yard. There are incidental
references to these "Commissioners of Scotland Yard" in the extensive
literature relating to Westminster Local Government, for which sec The
Manor and the Borough, 1908, pp. 212-231, especially p. 227; and Local
Government in Westminster, being the Special Annual Report <>f the Vestry of
St. Margaret and St. John on its supersession in 1889, pp. 114-115, 135-137.
We <1<> not know to what date these Commissioners for London and West-
minster survived. The Act of 1691 extended the scope of the powers of
regulation to all the parishes within the Bills of Mortality, but gave the
authority to the Justices in Quarter Sessions. It is possible that the Com-
missioners then ceased to exist as a separate body.
THE HARBOUR COMMISSIONERS 241
tion. Their works were to be paid for by contributions levied
on the particular properties benefited in proportion to their
frontage, and the office of " chief raker " was, it incidentally
appears, a source of considerable emolument, from the payments
made to him by the more substantial householders for emptying
their cesspools, and by certain Vestries.
The Improvement Commissioners
But the " Commissioners of Scotland Yard," as the new
London and Westminster Local Authority was commonly called,
afforded an exceptionally early example of statutory Improve-
ment Commissioners, just as we have seen that the Corporation
of the Poor of the City of London did of Incorporated Guardians.
For another three-quarters of a century the example was not
followed. We find, indeed, that, from 1696 onwards, certain
towns on the sea-coast sought and obtained statutory powers
to improve their harbours, and to levy port or shipping dues for
this purpose. These harbour powers were sometimes granted
to the Municipal Corporations, but in other cases special bodies
of Harbour Commissioners were constituted, and in a few in-
stances the Harbour Commissioners were authorised to deal
with the cleansing, lighting and watching of the streets. 1 We
have even one or two instances, such as those of Bristol in 1701
and Beverley in 1727, in which a Municipal Corporation was
empowered to levy a regular rate for cleansing and lighting.
But in 1736, when powers were obtained by the inhabitants of
1 The principal bodies of Commissioners established for harbour purposes
were, in the "first batch," those of Bridlington (1696), Dover and Rye (1699),
Colchester (1699), Minehead (1700), Whitby (1702), Parton (1706) and White-
haven (1709). Then we have a pause for a couple of decades, the march of
improvement being resumed in Newhaven (1730), Scarborough (1731), Little-
hampton (1732), Arundel (1733), Southwold (1746), Sunderland (1747), Rams-
gate (1748), Great Yarmouth (1749), Lancaster (1749), New Shoreham (1760),
Mevagissey (1775), Boston (1776), Aberystwith (1780), Margate (1787), Swansea
(1791), Broadstairs (1792), Carnarvon (1793), Amlwch (1793), Barmouth (1797),
Sheerness (1801), Bridport (1823), and Liverpool (1825).
These bodies were almost invariably formed on the type of the named list
of persons, filling vacancies by co-option, with a certain ex-officio element.
Only in Lancaster (1749), Swansea (1791), Liverpool (1825) and Rye (1830)
do we find the elective element beginning in the form now commonly adopted
for modern port authorities, the electors being shipowners and merchants, as
payers of dock-dues (in Swansea, the burgesses elected but had to choose either
colliery or ship owners). They were empowered to levy dues on ships and
goods, but not to rate.
R
242 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
New Sarum (or Salisbury) for paving, lighting and watching the
city, these were granted, not to the Municipal Corporation, but
to a body of " Trustees," consisting of the Mayor, Recorder and
Aldermen ex officio, and twelve other persons to be elected
annually by the ratepayers of the three parishes of the city.
This, too, was an exceptional instance, and it is not until 1748,
in the case of Liverpool, that we find the real start of an almost
continual stream of Local Acts establishing bodies of Improve-
ment Commissioners, which steadily increases in volume. After
the peace of 1763, there sets in everywhere a demand for im-
provements of one kind or another, among which the betterment
of town conditions finds a place. " A general spirit prevails,"
we read in 1771, " for correcting ancient errors and establishing
new improvements. . . . Every session of parliament is now
marked by some bill for the inclosing of commons, cutting of
canals, constructing of bridges, embanking of rivers, making,
mending and watering of highways, and for the paving and
lighting of streets." x The stream of Acts establishing new
Local Authorities, or amending their constitution or powers,
continued unabated right down to 1835, and even persisted,
especially for unincorporated towns, down to the middle of the
nineteenth century.
The new bodies of Improvement Commissioners created by
these Acts are found in every part of England, from Truro to
Berwick-on-Tweed, and, what is more surprising, in munici-
palities and unincorporated towns alike. Where a Municipal
Corporation existed, it is rare to find the new powers of paving,
cleansing, lighting, watching and regulating the town being
given to the Mayor, Aldermen and Council, though these and
other municipal officers would invariably be included in the new
body as ex-officio members. In practically every municipal
borough of any importance 2 there was created, between 1748
and 1835, a separate body of Improvement Commissioners,
with its own funds and its own official staff, wielding its own
distinct powers and levying its own rates. Between 1800 and
1835 these two hundred or more bodies of Improvement Com-
1 Critical Observations on the Buildings and Improvements of London,
1771, p. 17.
2 The only municipal boroughs, having in 1831 11,000 inhabitants, that
had never any separate body of Improvement Commissioners seem to have
been Leicester, Nottingham, Wenlock and Wigan.
THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS 243
missioners, in as many separate boroughs or urban parishes,
together with nearly a hundred similar bodies in the Metropolitan
parishes, far outweighed in importance, from the point of view
of activity and expenditure in local government, the old Municipal
Corporations that, in over a hundred cases, existed alongside
them. And as these three hundred statutory police and sanitary
authorities have never yet been described by the constitutional
historian, we must devote a few pages to an account of their
structure and working. 1
To begin with the constitution of these bodies, we note at
once how much more uniform they are in type than the statutory
bodies of Incorporated Guardians that we have described.
There is, it is true, the same endless diversity as regards the
details of structure, and the same difficulty in rinding any two
precisely alike. A certain ex-officio element is frequent, though
not universal ; in municipal boroughs, the Mayor and Aldermen ;
sometimes the lord of the manor or occasionally the officers of
the manorial courts ; 2 less frequently the members of Parliament,
the clergymen or the resident Justices of the Peace. 3 With regard
to the remainder of the membership, the whole of the three
hundred distinct bodies established prior to 1835 for paving,
cleansing, lighting and watching belong, if we ignore for the
moment about a dozen anomalies, 4 to one or other of three types.
1 For any study of these Improvement Commissioners there is even less
printed material than in the case of the Incorporated Guardians. They are
seldom described in town histories — often, indeed, they are not so much as
mentioned. Besides the Acts themselves, and the MS. Minutes of the bodies
established under them, we must refer the student to the fragmentary references
scattered through the many volumes of reports of the Municipal Corporation
Commission, 1835, the Commission on the Sanitary Condition of the Popula-
tion, 1842, the Commission on the State of Large Towns, 1844-1845, and the
Commissioners who investigated particular towns under the Public Health Act,
1848. Practically the only books dealing with the subject, and these chiefly
from the standpoint of the Local Acts, are The History of Private Bill Legisla-
tion, by F. Clifford, 1885-1887 — a confused medley of facts — and the systematic
study of this legislation entitled Municipal Origins, by F. H. Spencer, 1911.
See also the references given supra, pp. 5, 6, 8, and The Manor and the Borough,
1908, pp. 394-396.
2 As at Manchester and Salford, by all the Acts from 1765 to 1830.
3 At Nottingham, by the Act of 1762, the Improvement Commissioners
included all the Commissioners for the Land Tax as ex-officio members.
4 Among these anomalies we may mention the Hereford Acts of 1774 and
1816, by which the Commissioners were to consist of (a) all the local dignitaries
from the Lord Lieutenant of the County and the Bishop of the diocese down
to the Coroner and the Bailiff ; (6) two householders elected triennially by each
of the several parish Vestries ; and (c) ten persons co-opted by the above at their
244 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
Of these, by far the most frequent and the most characteristic
is that of the list of persons named in the Act, serving for life,
and authorised to fill vacancies among their number by simple
co-option. To this type belong nearly two hundred out of the
total of three hundred separate bodies of Improvement Com-
missioners, and it is especially dominant among the Local Acts
between 1760 and 1820. 1
The type standing next in favour is that in which some, at
any rate, of the Commissioners are elected. Of this there are
a few instances in each decade from 1748 onwards, the number
rising rapidly from 1820 to 1835, during which period some of
the bodies originally formed in other ways adopted " the elective
principle." About fifty bodies were originally established on
this type, and about twenty more subsequently changed to it. 2
The election was, however, frequently little more than a pretence
of democracy. The first Commissioners were often named in
the Act, their " successors " only being furnished by election,
at dates often undefined, and in a few instances only septennially.
There was always not only a relatively high qualification for
Commissioners, but almost invariably a substantial qualification
for voters. Moreover, the elected representatives seldom form
more than a small proportion of the whole body of Commissioners.
The third type is that in which the ex-officio element, and
first meeting, and renewed by co-option. The Charterhouse Square (London)
Act of 1742 established a body of Commissioners consisting of the officers of
the Charterhouse Charitable Foundation and ten persons chosen by the " pro-
prietors " of the square. The Pembroke Dock Act of 1819 incorporated, as
Commissioners, the chief naval officers at that station, and no one else. At
Monmouth, in 1818, the Commissioners were to consist of the Municipal Cor-
poration and eight persons selected by the Mayor and Common Council. The
Foundling Hospital Estate (London) was, by Act of 1794, governed by twenty-
one persons annually appointed by the Governors of the Hospital, and twenty-
one elected by the freeholders. All these bodies had extensive taxing, spending
and regulating powers.
1 Among the two hundred bodies of this type may be mentioned the Im-
provement Commissioners of Birmingham, Bradford, Cardiff, Cheltenham,
Coventry, Durham, Folkestone, Yarmouth, Huddersfield, Manchester and
Salford (between 1765 and 1792), Northampton, Southampton, Winchester,
Wolverhampton and three-fourths of those established in parishes or districts
in the Metropolitan area.
2 Among those originally established during the eighteenth century with
Borne elective representation were Chester, Leeds, Liverpool, Lincoln, Oxford
(for which see Oxford in the Eighteenth Century, by J. R. Green and G. Roberson,
vol. sdi. of Oxford Historical Society, 1901, pp. 333-337), Poole and Salisbury,
whilst it was subsequently adopted by such places as Brighton, Carlisle, Dor-
chester, Dover, Gravescnd, Hastings, Manchester. Shcerness and Sheffield.
THE PRINCIPLE OF CO-OPTION 245
frequently also the named list, are combined with all the
individuals, belonging to a specially defined class, such as all
substantial freeholders and leaseholders, all residents owning a
thousand pounds' worth of personalty, and all occupiers of
premises rated at thirty pounds a year. 1 The bodies of this
type vary from small oligarchies of the wealthy inhabitants
to what are practically open Vestries with a definite voting
qualification. We reckon that there were altogether about
fifty bodies of this type, nearly all in provincial towns, and
more than half of them established between 1820 and 1835. 2
If, however, we go behind the formal constitution as defined
by the Act of Parliament, and trace in the minutes the persons
who actually attended the meetings of these bodies, we find,
amid the diversity, an even greater identity. In town after
town, the minutes reveal the fact that the local dignitaries, who
were members ex officio, seldom or never attended. And even
where the Acts provided for new members being elected, it is
clear in many cases that no election took place, the vacancy
being either left unfilled, or filled by simple co-option. Thus,
in the vast majority of instances, the Improvement Commis-
sioners were, to all intents and purposes, a self-elected and self-
renewing little clique of " principal inhabitants." On the other
hand, there are some cases, notably Leeds and Woolwich, in
which the Commissioners were essentially an elected body, in
active connection with a numerous and energetic constituency ;
whilst in others again they were practically identical with an
open Vestry, limited by a high voting qualification.
So much for the constitution of these three hundred bodies
of Improvement Commissioners. To understand their practical
importance in the sphere of local government, we must realise
1 In Preston, by Act of 1815, all £50 leaseholders were Commissioners,
except publicans, who were not admitted unless their premises were worth
£100 a year. The Act of 1828, which reformed the Manchester Police Com-
missioners, also made the rating qualification for publicans twice that of other
ratepayers.
2 The most important instance of this type was the body which governed
Manchester and Salford (between 1792 and 1828). Among others may be
cited the Improvement Commissioners for Derby, Dudley, Godalming,
Hanley, Lancaster, Lewes, Lichfield, Maidstone, Oldham, Preston, Rochdale,
Ryde, Shrewsbury, Stockport and Worcester. Sometimes (as in the Bridg-
water Act of 1779 and the Market Street, Manchester, Act of 1776), all persons
subscribing £20 or more to the improvement are made Commissioners to
execute it.
246 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
something of the range of their activities. It should be noted,
in the first place, that their work, besides being specifically defined
by the words of their Act, was practically always limited by
their borrowing powers being confined to a fixed sum, and their
rate being subject to a prescribed maximum. In the simplest
examples these bodies were nothing more than little committees
of the residents on a particular landlord's estate in London or
Brighton, at first usually nominated by the freeholder, but
recruiting their numbers by co-option ; charged with the paving,
cleaning and lighting of the streets and squares in which they
lived, and dividing the cost of the service among all the house-
holders. More commonly the Improvement Commissioners, act-
ing for some provincial town, begin in the dull routine business
of paving, lighting and cleansing the streets, but gradually add
new municipal services, such as providing a night watch, pre-
venting encroachments, removing obstructions, regulating the
traffic, licensing sedan chairs and hackney coaches, prohibiting
the wandering of pigs in the thoroughfares, naming streets and
numbering houses, putting down nuisances and making byelaws
for the good order and government of the town. The minutes
of these bodies are not exciting reading and furnish but few points
of interest. Their services of paving, cleansing and lighting
were almost invariably let out to contractors ; and the one or
two officials who made up their staff were little better than work-
ing foremen. But as the towns grew in population some enter-
prising bodies of Improvement Commissioners launched out,
under successive Local Acts, into municipal enterprises of first-
rate importance. They constructed sewers to carry away flood
water ; they levelled and widened the main streets of their town ;
they bought the manorial rights, and erected markets and
slaughter-houses ; they laid on a new water-supply and main-
tained fire-engines, and in one case they even carried on a highly
profitable manufacture and supply of gas. 1 This widened range
of activities attracted popular interest, and gave scope for the
discussion of general principles, the conflict of interests and all
the excitement of political partisanship.
1 Comparing even the most energetic of the Improvement Commissioners
with a modem municipality, we notice the absence, from the list of services
undertaken l>y them, of any provision of parks and open spaces, libraries and
museums, picture galleries, baths and wash-houses, the means of transit and
housing, and, above all, the various grades and kinds of education.
THE TRUSTEES OF THE CUBITT ESTATE 247
The Trustees of the Cubitt Estate
We begin with a specimen of the simplest type, which happens
to come at rather a late date. At the opening of the nineteenth
century, the well-known London builder Cubitt was laying out
in streets and squares and covering with houses the Marquis of
Westminster's fields at Belgravia and Pimlico. In 1826 the
agents of the Marquis obtained a Local Act 1 creating a body of
' Trustees for paving, lighting, watching, repairing and otherwise
improving Grosvenor Place " and certain other streets in the
neighbourhood. This body, consisting of some of the wealthier
inhabitants, together with Cubitt and other builders, and renew-
ing itself by co-option, was empowered to borrow £30,000 and to
levy a rate not exceeding 2s. 9d. in the pound. The minute-
book of this " paving board " reveals to us the fortnightly meet-
ings of half-a-dozen persons, receiving complaints of " defective
footways," cellars and basements flooded with liquid filth, lamps
unlit, and all sorts of encroachments and nuisances. The
Trustees order their one and only paid official to complain to
the several contractors for paving, scavenging and lighting, of
the non-fulfilment of their contracts. The ratepayers are always
grumbling at the amount and inequality of the assessments,
which are arbitrarily fixed by the Trustees. But the Trustees
are evidently timid and afraid to act on their statutory powers.
They give way to any clamorous ratepayer and satisfy him by
reducing his assessment. We see them bargaining with a whole
street as to extra services to be given for the increased rate. 2
They petition against being upset by Hobhouse's Bill. But
when, in 1833, the great personages who dwell in Grosvenor
Place insist on " the propriety and justice of adopting the
representative system in the Board of Trustees, they meekly
reply, that they have no power to change their constitution
without Parliamentary leave, and request that if they have been
open to censure," the great personages will " be good enough to
point out their particular defects." 3 Finally, the democracy of
1 7 George IV. c. 58.
2 " Mr. Edwards attended and stated that he thought that the inhabitants
of houses in the Vauxhall Bridge Road would, if something was done for them,
pay the rates ; and was informed by the Trustees that they will light and
water the road if the rates are paid " (MS. Minutes of Trustees of the Cubitt
Estate, London, 1st March 1830).
3 Ibid. 8th July 1833.
248 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
Belgravia is too strong for them. A committee, headed by Lord
Fitzwilliam, publishes an indignant criticism of their proceedings,
exposing their apathy, their suspicious compositions with building
speculators, their extravagance in paving and lighting contracts,
and their neglect of the public interest in failing to charge the
cost of new streets on the freeholders. Even the Marquis of
Westminster " unequivocally declared himself in favour of the
representative system." 1 A new Local Act in 1834 amends
their constitution, requiring the existing Trustees to select by
lot twenty-four of their members, to whom are added twelve
persons elected by the ratepayers of the district. Through the
annual retirement of one-third of the whole thirty-six members,
and the annual election of their successors, the whole body
(with the exception of three persons nominated by the freeholder
and the builders) becomes representative of the ratepayers. 2
Whole districts in the Metropolitan area were, for purposes
of cleansing, lighting and paving, a mosaic of boards like the
Cubitt Trustees. In the parish of St. Pancras alone there were
no fewer than nineteen of them, whilst the total for the whole
Metropolitan area approached one hundred. 3 About these
bodies practically nothing is known, except that their results
were thoroughly unsatisfactory. A contemporary London
observer explains both their origin and their degeneration.
" Nothing can be more proper than the origin of a modern
Paving Act, which is always founded on' the application of the
parties interested, who propose to pave their own district at their
own expense. From among the inhabitants are selected a large
number of Commissioners whose names are inserted in the Act.
The attorney who has been employed to solicit the bill in Parlia-
1 An Address to the Inhabitant Ratepayers from their Committee, Grosvenor
Place District, 1833, p. 4.
2 4 & 5 William IV. c. 58.
3 " The number of independent boards for these objects in different parts
of London, exclusive of the City and exclusive of those parishes in which the
Vestries have power to regulate their own paving, lighting and cleansing, ia
marly one hundred. As most of these boards are practically self-appointed
and irresponsible, they of course publish no accounts of their receipts and
expenditure " {Local Government in the Metropolis, 1S30, p. 21). " Of paving
boards alone, it is said that about the middle of the last century there were
no less than eighty -four in the Metropolis — nineteen of them being in one
parish. The lighting of the parish of Lambeth was under the charge of nine
local Trusts. The affairs of St. Mary, Newington, were under the control of
thirteen Boards or Trusts, in addition to two Turnpike Trusts" (The Sanitary
Evolution of London, by Henry Jephson, 1907, p. 1-).
THE PLYMOUTH COMMISSIONERS 249
ment usually becomes their clerk, and until the new pavement
is complete the attendance of the Commissioners is full and
frequent. By degrees zeal for the new undertaking seems
unnecessary, or according to the nature of the unresisted zeal
is gradually extinguished, and the care of maintaining the pave-
ment cannot but devolve upon those whose duty binds them to
continue their attendance. These are usually the chairman of
the Commissioners and their clerk, assisted by .the pavior, .em-
ployed, whose advice in subordinate details is indispensable." x
Notwithstanding all complaints these local paving boards were
in full vigour in 1835, and they continued, indeed, in the Metro-
polis until 1855, when they were at last merged in the reorganised
Vestries and District Boards, established by Sir Benjamin Hall's
Act, which sent representatives to form the Metropolitan Board
of Works (itself destined, in 1889, to be transformed into the
London County Council), whilst the Vestries and District Boards
became, under the London Government Act of 1901, the Metro-
politan Boroughs of to-day.
The Plymouth Commissioners
The borough of Plymouth, incorporated by statute as early
as 1439, presents us with an example of the ordinary type of
Improvement Commissioners in a provincial town. The borough
was governed down to 1835, by a Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors
under a charter of 1697. This ancient Municipal Corporation
owned and exercised the manorial rights, administered a lucrative
water-supply and market, enjoyed valuable property and ex-
tensive patronage, and wielded, by its senior members, the sword
of justice in both civil and criminal cases. It remained right
down to the end of the eighteenth century an opulent and
dignified body, and in 1833 it earned the rare distinction by
being praised by the Municipal Corporation Commissioners as an
active and honest governing authority. 2 In the middle of the
eighteenth century the Mayor and Corporation were maintaining
a certain number of watchmen, hired out of the four shillings a
year which most householders paid as composition in lieu of
1 Eight Letters concerning the Pavement of the Metropolis and the adjoining
Turnpike Roads, by X. Y., 1817.
2 Municipal Corporations Commission Report (Appendix, part i. p. 595).
250 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
personal service. There were also a couple of town scavengers.
The town had its own stone quarries, and the Corporation had
made a beginning in the way of sewering and paving. It is
therefore all the more interesting to find that when, after the
conclusion of the Seven Years' War in 1763, there sprang up a
demand for town improvements, these were not undertaken by
the Corporation. In 1770, "a considerable movement having
been set on foot in the town for the paving, lighting, and watching
of Plymouth, an Act of Parliament was obtained, and a Board of
Commissioners appointed for the purpose of carrying out its
provisions." x This body consisted of the Mayor, Recorder,
Town Clerk, Coroner, the twelve Aldermen and the twenty-four
Common Councillors, ex officio, together with thirty named
persons, who were to fill vacancies among their number by
co-option of persons qualified by ownership of £40 a year free-
hold, or £1000 worth of personalty. 2
The minutes of this body for the first twenty years of its
existence have unfortunately not been preserved. It appears
to have started off with some energy in the matter of street
lighting, ordering 200 lamps, with wick and oil, " the same as
that used in London," to be erected and lit by contract. With
regard to the watch, it established a force of twenty men, " to
be armed with halberds as usual," carrying bells, and calling out
the hour and the weather. The householder's obligation to
personal service of watch and ward was merged in the new rate
levied by the Commissioners, but inhabitants who were not rated,
including therefore all occupiers of small cottages, continued
liable to serve, or to pay the composition. 3 The Commissioners
were apparently least successful in the scavenging of the town.
At first they were made the sole authority for this service, the
1 Seo History of Plymouth, by Llewellyn Jewitt (Plymouth, 1873), pp. 343-
347 ; History of Plymouth, by R. N. Worth, 1890, p. 223. Many references
to the local government of Plymouth will be found in 7'he Manor and the Borough,
1908 (see index). The well-kept archives arc described in the Calendar of the
Plymouth Municipal Records, by R. N. Worth (Plymouth, 1893).
2 10 George III. c. 14.
3 " Ordered that the Clerk do call upon the several collectors to make out
lists of the resiants in the present books, distinguishing such as arc willing to
pay their rates, from such as refuse to pay ; and that the constable and cor-
porals of the watch do afterwards call out the resiants so refusing, to watob
in rotation ; and on such condition they be excused from the payment of (lie
s.ii.l rates " (MS. Minutes, Improvement Commissioners, Plymouth, 27th
November L792).
NON-ATTENDANCE 251
Corporation having to contribute £40 a year to their funds.
Amending Acts of 1772 and 1774 x restored the work to the Mayor
and Corporation, who continued feebly to perform this function
(often contracting with the Incorporated Guardians to employ
paupers) right down to the reform of 1835. But the Commis-
sioners were given powers to put down nuisances, and to require
owners to pave and sewer streets — neither of which powers they
appear to have exercised. 2
From 1789, when the first existing minutes begin, down to
1824, when a new Act was obtained, the Commissioners were an
apathetic and uninteresting body. They met nominally every
week, but though the quorum was two only, many weeks in
succession there would be no business for lack of one. 3 They
had only two committees, one for examining accounts and one
for general purposes, and we infer that only about a dozen out
of the sixty or seventy members ever attended at all. The
Commissioners, in fact, confined themselves to levying their
maximum annual rate of sixpence in the pound on owners and
sixpence on occupiers, making contracts for lamplighting, and
for such small paving works as could be done out of their scanty
resources ; and to paying the wages of the watchmen. When
in 1820 their Surveyor of Pavement died, they decided (though
he was their only executive officer other than the old-fashioned
firm of solicitors who acted as their law clerks) not to appoint a
successor. 4
The Act of 1824 put new life into the Commissioners. 5 The
attendance at meetings rises to about forty, special committees
are appointed, the watch is increased, street improvements are
1 12 George III. c. 8 and 14 George III. c. 8.
2 We may cite, as the sort of exception that proves the rule, the following
resolution of 1821, which was probably not acted upon. " That the Clerks
and Treasurers be directed to take the necessary measures for prosecuting any
four persons for making obstructions and nuisances in the public streets, for
the sake of public example — selecting such instances as may appear to be the
fittest objects for such prosecutions " (MS. Minutes, Improvement Commis-
sioners, Plymouth, 13th March 1821).
3 In 1797-1798 there was no quorum for 48 successive weeks, in 1798-
1799 for 36 successive weeks, and in 1799-1800, even for 50 successive weeks
(ibid. 1797-1800). 4 Ibid. 25th April 1820.
5 An Act for Better Paving, Cleansing, Watching and Improving the Town
and Borough of Plymouth in the County of Devon, and for regulating the Police
thereof, and for removing and preventing Nuisances and Annoyances therein
(Plymouth, 1824). This Act made no change in the composition of the Com-
missioners.
252 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
undertaken, and certain kinds of obstruction in the thorough-
fares and nuisances are proceeded against. This spurt of
activity lasts only a few years, and the body soon sinks back to
its former level of scanty attendance , and apathy. In 1830,
indeed, it is moved to protest against Hobhouse's bill, and the
solicitor is despatched to London in order to obtain the exclusion
of Plymouth from the scope of the measure. 1 In the following
year the fear of cholera, and the remonstrances of a local " Board
of Health " that had been formed, induced the Commissioners
to give notice " to the sub-surveyors that if they do not exert
themselves and cause the different nuisances to be removed
from all parts of the town in conformity with the provisions of
the Improvement Act, at the expiration of one month from this
time they will be dismissed from their appointments." 2 But
nothing could galvanise the Plymouth Commissioners into
lasting activity or any sort of efficiency. Early in 1836, without
remonstrance or complaint, they ceded to the newly elected
Town Council the administration of the watch and the levying
of threepence out of their former rate. For another eighteen
years they lingered out a moribund existence, before being in
1854 finally merged in the Municipal Corporation on the applica-
tion to the borough of the Public Health Act. 3
The " Lamp Commissioners " of Birmingham
The Improvement Commissioners in some other places were
more successful than those of Plymouth. At Birmingham, for
instance, they made themselves, after thirty years of comparative
inactivity, into the principal governing authority of that im-
portant town. 4 The " Borough and Manor of Byrmyngham," as
1 MS. Minutes, 13th April and 8th June 1830.
2 Ibid. 8th March, 1st November and 15th November 1831.
3 Their minutes end 11th July 1854.
* For the local government history of Birmingham (with which we have
already dealt in The Parish and the Count//, 1907, pp. 117-11S, 582-583, etc,
and, more extensively, in The Manor and the Borough, l'JOS, vol. ii. pp. 157-100,
264-265, etc.) the most important sources are the .MS. .Minutes of the Improve-
ment Commissioners from 1770 to 1851, and those of the Town Council from
L838 <mward. The MS. Minutes of the Vestry of St. .Martin's, and those of
the Incorporated Guardians are less fruitful, and the Court Leet records oon-
lam practically nothing of interest. On the other hand, the local histories are
exceptionally full and detailed, and much is to be gained from the various
editions of William Button's History of Birmingham (Birmingham, 1781 ; latest
edition, 1840) ; The History of the Corporation of Birmingham, by J. T. Bunce
THE " LAMP COMMISSIONERS " OF BIRMINGHAM 253
it was called in the sixteenth century, was already in Tudor
times a thriving industrial centre, which, although not legally
incorporated, seems long to have enjoyed a certain measure of
independent communal organisation. 1 The manorial courts
dwindled, as we have elsewhere described, into little more than
occasions for conviviality. The Vestry seems, for some reason,
to have been an inert body, confining itself practically to church
administration, 2 and when, about the middle of the eighteenth
century, the population took to doubling itself in a generation,
the need for some governing authority became imperative. An
attempt to get a Local Act was made in 1765, but failed owing to
the opposition to any new rate. Four years later a renewed
effort was more successful, and a body of " Lamp," " Streets " or
Improvement Commissioners was incorporated, renewing them-
selves by co-option, but with narrowly limited rating powers. 3
A subsequent Act of 1773 slightly enlarged the Commissioners'
functions, but, as William Hutton remarks, " committed to the
care of about seventy-six irresolute Commissioners . . . who
wisely argue against the annihilation of one evil because another
will remain," the new authority was for a long time not turned
to any effective use. The well-kept but brief and formal minutes
of the Commissioners, which exist from 1776, reveal only a scanty
attendance, at very irregular meetings. The Commissioners
engaged at first no salaried officers whatsoever. Dividing the
(Birmingham, 1878-1885), with a third volume by C. A. Vince (Birmingham,
1902) ; A Century of Birmingham Life (1868) and Modern Birmingham and its
Institutions (1873-1877), both by J. A. Langford ; Old and New Birmingham
(1879-1880) and The Making of Birmingham (1894), both by R. K. Dent ; and
" Hints for a History of Birmingham," by James Jaffray, being a series of
articles from the Birmingham Journal for 1855, collected into a volume in the
Birmingham Public Library. Further references will be found in our book,
The Manor and the Borough, 1908, pp. 157-160.
1 In the Survey of the Borough and Manor of Birmingham, by Clement K.
Throkmorton (Birmingham, 1891), dating from 1553, we find " the Bailiff and
Commonalty of the Borough of Byrmyngham " holding stalls and standings
in the market place, at a fixed rent, as tenants of the lord of the manor (pp.
60-61).
2 The MS. Minutes of the Vestry of St. Martin's, Birmingham, the mother-
parish, between 1795 and 1842, contain hardly any entries relating to local
government.
3 All houses under £6 a year value, all gardens and arable land, all stock-in-
trade and personalty, and all empty premises were exempt ; on houses between
£6 and £10 a year the rate was never to exceed twopence ; between £10 and
£15, threepence ; between £15 and £20, fourpence ; and between £20 and £25,
eightpence in the pound — an interesting example of " differential rating."
2 54 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
town into twelve districts, they appointed a committee for each,
it being assumed that the Commissioners themselves would report
all nuisances, and supervise the lamplighting for their own
neighbourhoods. 1 Their first work was a struggle, which lasted
for a whole decade, against the " bulksashes," or bow windows,
obstructing the narrow streets. 2 Then the yawning cellars engage
their attention, and these dangers to passengers are vigorously
" closed down " or " filled up " or protected by iron gratings.
The stone steps at front doors are declared nuisances and ordered
to be removed. Fireworks and squibs are forbidden ; barrels are
not to be left about the streets, nor horses allowed to wander at
large. The washing of " brass dirt " and metals in the streets
had been stopped. The heaps of broken glass and crockery,
casting-pots and brick-ends, slack, shop sweepings and other
rubbish, had been carried away. Dog-fighting and bull-baiting
in the public streets had been suppressed. But the Commis-
sioners had, by the end of the century, not made much headway
with the street improvements, which had been one of the primary
objects of their establishment. " The old fingerposts which had
stood at every turning and had become shattered and crazy,
they swept away. The ravines . . . had been filled up. The
Shambles, the Round House and the Old Cross, which nearly
filled the whole area of Bull Ring, they cleared away in 178 i." 3
As at Plymouth, the narrow financial limits set to the Commis-
sioners' powers soon stopped work in this direction. Meanwhile
a few lamps were erected, and their lighting was paid for by
contract. A feeble attempt was made about 1791 to pave the
footways in one or two principal streets ; and a small sum was
from time to time expended in clearing away the worst of the
dirt that defiled the streets. 4 Police there was none. Prior to
1 MS. Minutes, Improvement Commissioners, Birmingham, 10th December
1776.
2 " That notice be given to the owner and builder of the houses in Newton
Street that they will not be permitted to put out any bulk-sash, the streets
not being 10 yards wide, and to take those down that arc already built, or the
penalty will be levied according to the Act" (ibid, 5th August 1777).
3 " Hints for a History of Birmingham," by James Jaffray.
1 "Thai Hill do immediately pr» iceed to clean the several streets in rotation,
• •eable to the printed list ; and that the gentlemen who are mentioned and
appointed in the said list for ovi rlooking the number of streets therein lixed
be requested to superintend the scavengers during the time of cleaning such
several street; and see that the same are properly done" (MS. Minutes,
[mprovemenl Commissioners, Birmingham, 11th November 1777).
AN ENERGETIC GOVERNMENT 255
1789, there were no night watchmen whatsoever, and, apart from
the market, practically no constables. From 1789 to 1801 the
provision of a nightly watch was left entirely to the private
subscriptions of the wealthier quarters of the town. 1 Right
down to the end of the eighteenth century, the Birmingham
Commissioners seem fairly to have merited Hutton's reproach. 2
With the opening of the nineteenth century comes a spurt
of activity. A new Local Act is obtained in 1801, bringing
into assessment all houses over one pound a year value, and
giving additional borrowing powers. New byelaws are framed,
greatly enlarging the list of practices forbidden as nuisances.
The duty of maintaining a nightly watch, hitherto left to private
subscription, is undertaken by the Commissioners, and a force
of sixty men is, during the winter months, taken into public pay. 3
The market tolls, and with them the management of the market,
are taken on lease from the lord of the manor. 4 In 1812 yet
another Local Act is obtained, bringing all houses whatsoever
into assessment, doubling the rate, and giving power to borrow
£24,000. With this new authority, the Commissioners transform
themselves into a regularly organised and fairly efficient muni-
cipal government. Their regular monthly meetings secure an
attendance of between forty and sixty. All the executive work
is now practically delegated to standing committees, of which
there were eventually five, dealing respectively with finance,
1 In 1789, we are told, " A meeting was held in the suburban district of
St. Paul's, and a committee was appointed to establish a night patrol in that
quarter. The example was contagious, so each of the districts of the town
formed committees of their own and engaged watchmen on their own respon-
sibility. The committee in their turn always accompanied the patrol in their
nocturnal perambulations, in order to be assured that they did their duty.
... It was considered excellent sport by the young bloods of Birmingham to
have command of the patrol and many of their companions used to join them
on duty, the result being a jolly night of it, and abundance of amusement "
(" Hints for a History of Birmingham," by James Jaffray).
2 Their total annual expenditure did not reach £1000 until their tenth year
of existence ; and had not, after thirty years, attained £2000 (Hutton's History
of Birmingham, pp. 224-225).
3 Ibid. 5th October 1801. As late as 1829 the watchmen were employed
officially only during the seven dark months of the year. They were allowed
to " collect pay on their rounds during the summer months and this is universally
practised " (MS. Report of Superintendent of Police, Manchester, of his Tour
of Inspection to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham, etc., in 1829).
4 For 21 years, at £60 a year ; ibid. 6th January 1806. These market
rights (without the manor itself) were eventually acquired by the Corporation
(The Manor and the Borough, by S. and B. Webb, 1908, p. 160).
256 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
markets, lamps and watching, sweeping and paving. The
members of the Paving Committee were habitually appointed
by the magistrates to be Surveyors of Highways for the parish,
and as such levied their own distinct highway rate, and main-
tained their own separate offices and clerical establishment.
Under this authority the streets were gradually paved. The
Commissioners' annual revenue and expenditure in 1830, when
the population had risen to 146,986 (1831 census), amounted to
the respectable total of £17,000. They courted publicity, making
their books and even the proceedings of their committee meetings
" open to all ratepayers on paying a small sum to the clerk." 1
In 1828 a new Local Act was obtained, authorising the borrowing
of no less than £100,000, including £25,000 for a Town Hall,
and the levying of an additional rate of sixpence in the pound
for this purpose, exclusively on premises valued at £15 a year
and upwards. The markets, now become a profitable service,
are enlarged, and the Commissioners take the management
and toll-collecting into their own hands. 2 Their total rate rises
to the considerable sum of half-a-crown in the pound. A Town
Surveyor is appointed at a salary of £150 a year. The scaven ger-
ing is no longer contracted for or left to amateur supervision,
but is done in 1829 by a directly employed staff of 18 sweepers,
13 scrapers and 11 horses and carts, at a net cost of over £1000 a
year. The lamps are lit by gas, and 106 watchmen patrol the
town. Altogether, as we learn from a ' Manchester official in
1829, " the streets of Birmingham have an air of cleanliness
and comfort to which Manchester is an entire stranger." 3 The
Birmingham Improvement Commissioners continued in full
activity, as a fairly efficient governing body, until they were, in
1851, by mutual consent, merged in the Municipal Corporation.
The " Police Commissioners " of Manchester
For the best example of a really energetic and successful
body of Improvement Commissioners we must turn not to
1 This is the only instance wo know of in which a charge for inspection of
the minutes has been formally authorised.
3 Birmingham Neio Market Place: a Letter addressed to one of the Com-
missioners of the Birmingham Street Act, by Charles Fiddian (Birmingham,
1828) ; Observations on a Letter . . ., by Mr. Charles Fiddian, etc., by William
Eaines (Birmingham, 1828).
- Ms. Report of the Superintendent of Police, Manchester, of his Tour of
Inspection to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham, etc., in 182!).
THE " POLICE COMMISSIONERS " OF MANCHESTER 257
Birmingham, but to the greatest of the new manufacturing centres,
in which the massing of population, the extension of enterprise
and the growth of a wealthy class were, at the same time, creating
the need for increased government and throwing up men capable
of the task. The Vestry organisation of the great parish of
Manchester had, as we have already described, 1 fallen towards
the end of the eighteenth century into a state of indescribable
disorder, owing to the impracticable relations between the
Churchwardens and Overseers, the Justices of the Peace, the
inhabitants in Vestry assembled and the officers of the Court
Leet. But these separate and conflicting authorities, though
they managed between them the poor, the highways and the
primitive police force, had, fortunately for the town, in other
matters been superseded by a statutory body of Commissioners.
Perhaps, owing to the very disorganisation of the parish govern-
ment, the Police Commissioners, as they were always called,
had, from their inception in 1765 by the Act 5 George III. c. 81,
down to their absorption in the Town Council in 1842, at no time
any connection whatsoever with the Vestry or any of its officers.
The first thirty years' records of the Manchester and Salford
Police Commissioners have disappeared, but we learn that " soon
after the passing" of the Act of 1792 (32 George III. c. 69), which
repealed the 1765 Act, " the Commissioners thereby appointed
divided and formed two distinct bodies," 2 one consisting of the
Commissioners resident in Manchester, and the other of those
resident in Salford. These two bodies, appointing separate estab-
lishments and levying separate rates, henceforth confined their
activities to their respective towns. This voluntary (and, until
1828, entirely extra-legal) separation probably took place in 1797,
from which date the records in the Manchester Town Hall begin. 3
1 The Parish and the County, by S. and B. Webb, 1907.
2 Preamble to Manchester Local Act of 1828 (9 George IV. c. 117) which
ratified this separation. Under the Act of 1792, " the Commissioners for better
cleaning, lighting and regulating the towns of Manchester and Salford " con-
sisted of the Warden and Fellows of the College of Christ in Manchester, the
Boroughreeve and Constables and all owners and occupiers of premises of the
yearly rent of £30, at the least, who took the prescribed oath (32 George III.
c. 69). The legal establishment of the Salford Commissioners as a separate
body was by the Act of 1828 (9 George IV. c. 17).
3 For the Manchester Police Commissioners, the student may consult the
MS. Minxrtes which exist from 1797 only ; the successive Acts, 32 George III.
c. 69 ; 49 George III. c. 192 ; 53 George III. c. 20 ; 56 George III. c. 12 ;
1 & 2 George IV. c. 47 ; 1 & 2 George IV. c. 126 ; 4 George IV. c. 115 ; 5
^George IV. c. 133; 9 George IV. g. 117; 11 George IV. c. 47 ; 1 William IV.
S
258 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
The Manchester Police Commissioners have for us a special
interest. In their three-quarters of a century of existence they
exemplify all the three representative types of statutory bodies
of Commissioners ; beginning in 1765 as a limited number of
named persons co-opting their successors ; then transformed in
1792 into a body consisting of the whole of a class ; and finally,
in 1828, being reconstituted as a body of elected representatives.
No less interesting is the fact that, especially between 1808
and 1835, these Commissioners included among their most active
members most of the men who were then making Manchester
famous for its commercial enterprise and aggressive political
opinion — the Phillips, Potters, Taylors, Garnetts, Heywoods,
Brookses, and, later on, Richard Cobden himself. During these
years the Manchester Police Commissioners, as we shall presently
describe, initiated in their municipal gas-works the most remark-
able of all municipal experiments prior to 1835, and thus gave
to the new Town Council an impetus which was not spent for a
whole generation, and which secured to Manchester the premier
place in English municipal development until the rise of Birming-
ham in the 'seventies. And it is in the records of these Commis-
sioners that we discover the first instance of that marked cleavage
in municipal policy — neither dependent on, nor exactly coinciding
with, the contemporary cleavage in national politics — which has
since accompanied all vigorous municipal life in this country.
The first volume of these minutes exhibits the new body of
Commissioners struggling slowly and fitfully to establish their
authority in the densely crowded streets and slums of the Man-
chester of that time. The meetings recorded from 1797 to 1807
were seldom attended by more than a dozen persons and often
failed for lack of a quorum. The most pressing business was
apparently the establishment of a Night Watch, beginning in
1797 with a force of 14 men. Then 1000 lamps were bought,
which were frugally lit on " twenty dark nights per month from
the 1st October to the 30 April." * Twenty-two firemen were
c. 16; 6 William IV. c. 1(5; 1 Vict. c. 37; 2 Vict. o. 2; 2 .V 3 Vict. c. 87;
.i \ 4 Vict. c. 30 ; 4 Vict. c. 8 ; 5 & 6 Vict. c. 117 ; 6 Vict.* 17; the incidental
references in the various forewords and footnotes in The Manchester Municipal
Code, 6 vols. 1K94- 1901; the sources cited in The Pariah and the County and
The Manor ami t/«< Borough (see index) ; and such oontroversial pamphlets as
those cited in the following pages, most of which are to be found in the Man-
chester Public Library.
1 .M.S. Minutes, Police Commissioners, Manchester. - 1 1 1 • November 1797.
ELEMENTARY IMPROVEMENTS 259
appointed to attend when required to work the public fire-
engine. 1 In 1800 a special committee was directed to report
what nuisances should first be taken in hand. In a vigorous
report the Committee map out a scheme of work, 2 which occupied
all the energy of the Commissioners for several years. The
manifold encroachments on the streets by projecting steps and
cellar entrances were to be removed ; war was declared against
the stalls that obstructed the footways and the signboards that
darkened the air ; the lines of posts that divided these footways
from the road were to be cleared away ; dangerous places were
to be fenced off from the highway ; the excessive smoke from
factory chimneys was to be restrained ; and finally, wandering
pigs were to be excluded from the streets. 3 This programme
was not completely carried out for the next ten years, as the
Commissioners found the mere management of the watching,
lighting and scavenging of the city no light task, to say nothing
of the trouble that it cost to assess and collect the rates. This
is explained by the reluctance of the Commissioners to engage
a salaried staff. The Commissioners resident in each ward were
required personally to select the watchmen for that ward, to
see that they were properly on duty, to give orders for the repair
of their watch-boxes, to inspect the paving, to notice whether
the contractor lit the lamps on the nights and at the hours
stipulated for, to take care that the contractor cleaned the streets
as agreed upon, and generally to act as amateur superintendents
of police and inspectors of nuisances for their several neigh-
bourhoods. It was not until after seven years' experience that
the Commissioners could bring themselves (in 1804) to appoint
an officer at £150 a year, to combine the command of the police
with the superintendence of the scavenging and all the other
manifold work of the town. 4 After 1807, when the accounts
were for the first time " ordered to be printed for the information
of the public," 5 we notice a steady development in organisation
and growth in activity. The committees were more definitely
organised ; and the ordinary work of lighting and scavenging,
1 MS. Minutes, Police Commissioners, Manchester, 27th December 1799.
2 Ibid. 5th September 1800.
3 " That Mr. Braddock give notice to the shoemaker who has for some
time been in the habit of permitting his pigs to remain and be fed in the street
at the bottom of Hunt's Bank that unless he discontinues i.his practice he will
be summoned and fined " (ibid. 7th May 1802).
4 Ibid. 16th November 1804. 5 Ibid. 13th November 1807,
260 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
together with the management of the watch, ran more smoothly.
All the houses were numbered, and sometimes renumbered, at
the public expense. Pigsties within the town were declared
a common nuisance, and proceeded against at the Court Leet.
The leading inhabitants were eager for further activity. A
Town's Meeting called in the beginning of the year appointed an
influential committee to consider the propriety of getting a new
Local Act, giving greatly increased powers of self-government.
This committee gave the necessary notices for a new Act. They
recommended the purchase of the market and other manorial
rights for a sum which they had provisionally agreed with the
Lord of the Manor at £90,000 ; a large scheme of street improve-
ment, including widening and repaving, with the purchase of
adjoining land for recoupment ; the amalgamation of the Sur-
veyors of Highways and the Commissioners for the Market
Street Widening with the general body of Commissioners ; and
many other reforms of various kinds. 1 But these reforming
spirits were too bold for the citizens of their day. They had
ventured to propose, not only " a moderate Sunday Toll to be
collected from horses, cattle and carriages at the different avenues
leading from the town " — those conveying persons to places of
worship being exempted — but also a new fourpenny rate " charged
upon and made payable by the owner," though " assessed with
the Police Rate upon the occupier and collected from him." 2
This led to a storm of indignation, and a whole sheaf of pamphlets,
under the influence of which these bold projects were dropped. 3
1 One of the authors takes a pleasure in recording that on this committee
sat her great-uncle, Thomas (afterwards Sir T.) Potter, in 1838 first Mayor of
Manchester.
2 See the instructive Reports of the several committees appointed in con-
sequence of a Public Meeting of the inhabitants of Manchester for taking into
consideration the following subjects, viz. The New Police Act, Pacing, Flagging
and Soughing, Sunday Toll, Local Administration of Justice, Purchase of the
Manor of Manchester, etc. (Manchester, 1808).
3 Among them were the following : An Address to the Inhabitants of Man-
chester on the impolicy of their purchasing the Manor, by Charles M'Niven
(Manchester, 1809); A Reply to Mr. M'Niven' 8 Address to the inhabitants of
Manchester on the impolicy of their purchasing the Manor, by one of the Ad-
dressed (.Manchester, 1809); Report of the committee appointed at a Public
Tou-n's Meeting of the Inhabitants of Manchester to treat conditionally with
Sir Oswald Mosley for the purchase of the Manor (Manchester, 1809): The
Murder is out, or Committeemen fingering Cash, being a sequel to New Taxes,
Uy Thousand Pounds, addressed to every householder in th, Manor of I
Chester, by Francis Philips ( Manchester, 1809) ; A Letter to Francis Philips, Esq.,
on his pamphlet entitled " Murder is Out,'" etc., by a Native of the Parish of
THE WATER SUPPLY 261
Whilst they were still in controversy came a great struggle over
the water question. In the session of 1809 two sets of promoters
had rival schemes in Parliament for improving the water supply,
both of them being vigorously opposed by the Commissioners on
behalf of the citizens. Crowded town's meetings condemned
the bills, and enthusiastically adopted the report of a committee
which advocated the policy of municipalisation. 1 The Com-
missioners spent £1760 in this Parliamentary campaign, with
little success. The " Stone Pipe Company " got its Act, 2 con-
ceding only a few protective clauses ; and its friends form-
ally objected to the Commissioners' expenditure, which Quarter
Sessions eventually disallowed. The Commissioners, it was held,
" had no power to apply the police fund in a Parliamentary
defence of the rights of the inhabitants, though such defence be
directed and carried on by the inhabitants at large." 3 We hear
little of the Commissioners for the next ten years, which were,
Manchester (Manchester, 1809) ; Coke upon Lyttleton ; or the Rejoinder, by
Francis Philips (Manchester, 1809) ; The History of Johnny Shuttle and his
cottage (Manchester, 1809). Copies of these are rare, but they are described
in Manchester Court Leet Records, vol. xii. preface, p. xvii. The Manor, which
could have been acquired in 1808 for £90,000, was bought in 1846 for £200,000
(The Manor and the Borough, by S. and B. Webb, 1908, vol. i. p. 113 ; Mediaeval
Manchester and the Beginnings of Lancashire, by James Tait, 1904, p. 37).
1 " Your Committee are also of opinion that the supply of the town of
Manchester with water ought to be under the direction of its own inhabitants
and that it would be contrary to sound policy to entrust the furnishing and
control of this important article of food and cleanliness on which the health
and comfort of the inhabitants depend, to persons whose sole object will be
the promotion of their own private interest, and who are induced to the under-
taking from no other motive." It was therefore proposed that the town should
have its own water supply, under the management of the Churchwardens and
Overseers, acting in conjunction with the Commissioners and the Surveyors of
Highways ; tbat the capital should be raised by the issue of Manchester Town
notes transferable as currency but bearing interest ; and that the surplus
profits should be devoted to the relief of the rates (History of the Origin and
Progress of the Water Supply of Manchester, 1851, an excellent volume reprinted
from the Manchester Guardian). Municipalisation did not come for another
forty years. The company acquired the primitive waterworks owned by the
Lord of the Manor at Holt Town, Beswick, and constructed additional works
at Gorton. The whole undertaking was purchased by the Town Council in
1847, when extensive new works were constructed in the Longdendale Valley
(^Manchester Municipal Code, 1896, vol. iii. ; History and Description of the
Thirlmere Water Scheme, by Sir J. J. Harwood, 1895).
2 49 George III. c. 192.
3 History of the Origin and Progress of the Water Supply in Manchester,
p. 28. See the MS. Minutes of the Commissioners, 4th May and 29th September
1809 ; and those of the Lancashire Quarter Sessions, Salford, 10th October
1810, where the total disallowed is stated as £2500. The active Commissioners
presumably had personally to subscribe the sum disallowed, with costs.
262 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
in Manchester as elsewhere, " a time of transition from gloom to
apparent prosperity." x It was, however, during this period of
political repression and economic distress that the Commissioners
started their boldest and most important experiment. Already
in 1807 they had begun to make gas in a small way in order to
light with it their office, and presently some of the street lamps.
" As the use of gas thus spread, its superiority to all other light
made the public anxious to obtain it for private consumption,
and several public meetings were held for the purpose of urging
the Commissioners of Police to extend the works so as to supply
the general demand. In compliance with the feeling thus mani-
fested, the Commissioners made a formal appeal to the rate-
payers at large by calling a meeting specially for the purpose of
obtaining an express sanction for that object. This meeting
took place on the 30th April 1817, and resolved unanimously
' That it will be expedient to adopt the proposed mode of lighting
the central parts of the town with gas, and for the purpose of
effecting this object to raise the police rate from 15d. to 18d.
in the pound.' : New gas-works were accordingly set up in 1817
to supply the public, and these were gradually extended year by
year as the revenue came in. 2 That this " municipal trading "
was entirely unauthorised by law did not apparently much
trouble the Commissioners. For seven years they conducted
their new enterprise without any specific Parliamentary powers,
using the substantial annual profit to extend the works. 3 In
1 Reminiscences of Old Manchester and Salford, by an Octogenarian (Man-
chester, 1887).
2 No other public authority undertook the gas supply for many years. At
Derby, for instance, when in 1819 the inhabitants held meetings to obtain a
gas supply, it was taken for granted that the only way was to form a joint
stock company (Derby Mercury, 27th May 1819).
3 Baines (History of the County Palatine of Lancaster, vol. ii. p. 349) says
that " the merit of originating these works on the present liberal plan is prin-
cipally due to George William Wood," afterwards M.P. for South Lancashire.
But their success was due in no small degree to Thomas Potter, another of the
Commissioners, who, though at the head of a large business, devoted much
time to their management. We have come across the statement as a current
saying of the time, that "Tom Potter is always at the izasworks : he even
goes there every Sunday after chapel, just to see how they were getting on."
The great administrative ability of Thomas Wroe, appointed manager in 1834,
definitely established their great financial success. For the history of the
Manchester Gas Works, see (besides the MS. Minutes of the Commissioners)
the able account given in the Manchester Municipal Code (Manchester, 1896),
vol. iii. pp. 357-400 ; Some Account of the Manchester Oas Works, by John
Shuttleworth (Manchester, 1861), a paper read at the British Association in
THE SUPPLY OF GAS 263
1823 a private enterprise—" The Manchester Imperial Joint
Stock Oil Gas Company " — entered the field, and applied for an
Act to enable it to supply gas in competition with the Com-
missioners, whose memorial in defence of municipal monopoly
in gas supply is worth quoting as showing the spirit in which
these Manchester merchants undertook their public work. They
recite " that during the last seven years the Commissioners of
Police acting on behalf and for the benefit of the public, have
expended upwards of £30,000 in the erection of gas-works, which
works they are preparing to extend as rapidly as circumstances
will admit of ; every inhabitant paying police rates is interested
in these works in proportion to the amount of his rate, and when
owning or occupying premises of the yearly value of £30 or
upwards has a direct control in the appointment of a committee
of management, in the choice of servants, and in every other
matter connected therewith ; the injury to the streets and the
loss and annoyance to the inhabitants inevitable upon the laying
down of gas pipes have already been incurred in the most public
and important parts of the town ; that every repetition of the
process must produce a recurrence of its attendant evils, and the
permanent inconveniences necessarily incident to works of this
nature must be ever in proportion to the number of establish-
ments formed. That in this great and rapidly increasing town
there exists no permanent fund whatever for its general improve-
ment, and the public, no less than the Commissioners of Police,
have looked forward with great satisfaction to the acquisition
of a fund applicable to that purpose ; that the existing gas-
works are productive of a profit which, instead of being applied
to the private advantage of individuals, is available for general
objects, and may be directed either to a reduction of the public
rates, or to purposes of public improvement, according to the
varying wants and circumstances of the times as may appear
best to the inhabitants at large. That the consumers of gas are
unquestionably entitled to an adequate supply of a quality as
good as can be manufactured and at rates which, leaving only a
fair and reasonable profit on the public capital invested, shall
not exceed the prices paid in neighbouring towns ; and that
1861 by the Chairman of the Gas Committee from 1843 to 1861 ; and a critical
reply to this, entitled Observations on the Paper read by John Shuttleworth, Esq.,
before the British Association on the Manchester Gas Works, 1861.
264 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
these desirable objects are more likely to be obtained by a genera]
establishment conducted under an effective public control than
by any private association fotmded solely for immediate gain." J
The Commissioners accordingly promoted a bill of their own, to
ratify and authorise their municipal gas-works, which were to be
managed by a committee of thirty Gas Directors, appointed by
the Commissioners for three years, one-third retiring annually.
Whether the Parliament of 1821 would deliberately have approved
of this " municipal trading " seems doubtful, but the Manchester
Commissioners were fortunate in their opponents. The pro-
moters of the private company " resorted to gross frauds in
getting up petitions in support of their bill, which proceeding
excited great indignation, and produced a reactionary influence
in favour of the project of the Commissioners." 2 which thus
became law (5 George IV. c. 133) — the first legislative " recogni-
tion of the principle that gas establishments might be created
by public funds and be conducted by public bodies for the public
benefit."
This vigorous municipal policy of the Commissioners did not
meet with universal approval. A numerous and pertinacious
section — the owners of small cottage property, the shopkeeper^
and small masters, the beer sellers and publicans — regarded
much of the activity of the Commissioners as both inimical to
their pecuniary interests and contrary to their notions of political
expediency. " It was forgotten," said a vigorous local critic.
"' that, whatever right the Commissioners might have to light
the streets with gas . . . they had no more right to monopolise
the manufacture of gas for the lighting of private establishments
than they have to monopolise the spinning of cotton wicks
because cotton wicks are spun and used by the Commissioners of
Police in lighting the public streets. ... It seems as manifestly
unjust to excite public feeling and raise an outcry and contend
with the public purse against an intended partnership in the sale
of gas. as it would be were the same means used to oppose a set
1 MS. Minutes, Manchester Police Commissioners, 5th November 1823.
2 Some Account of the JIunicipal Gas Works, by John Shuttleworth, 1861 :
Observations on the Paper read by John ShuttleK-orth, Esq., before the British
Association on the Manchester Gas Works, 1861, p. 4. The Parliamentary
struggle is well described in The Recorder of Birmingham, a Memoir of Matthew
Davenport Hill, 1878, pp. 93-95. Hill was counsel for the Commissioners, and
had the courage to put forward an abstract case for municipalisation as a
matter of principle.
MUNICIPAL POLITICS
of men about to est ton factory. Hot loud would
have been the lamentations poured into the public ear had the
Commissioners resolved to appropriate the Police rate to the
erection of a factory to spin lamp wicks, a foundry to cast lamp
column- a priming press to print their own placards and
rate-notes. Btit the A public feeling who manage the
affairs of the town . . . did not sell gas. The spinners, the
iron merchants, the founders and the letterpress printers who
are their admiring auditors, did not perceive that they were led
iak p a 12.'. o in police and political economy. ... At
great expense we have converted the Commissioners of Police
into dealers and chapmen, and have secured to them the
elusive sale of their ware- ich price as they shall deem
reasonable." 1 As the principal consumers o: gas, the a ^op-
keepers and publicans objected to the price of this article being
deliberately fixed far above in order to produce funds for
town improvements. As the occupiers of small workrooms, shops
and .sliked the growing staingen 7 with which trade
signs tructions of the pavement and petty street nuisances
were being prosecuted. The whole class saw no advantage in
the increased expenditure on b the night watch and paid
officials. Moreov : u Radical politicians of that day. they
objected on principle to any kind of monopoly, municipal or
otherwise : to any authoritative interference with individual
action or personal behaviour : and to the employment of salaried
and professional services in place of those rendered by un~
citizens. In our account of the parish orga n isation of Man-
chei described ho~ Dowed by the Radical and
nonconformist factory oper were, between I - _
rming into the open stay zneetht _ jte Collegiate Church,
and contes- ing ith turbulen* aastency, the rxpendrture of
the Constables and Churchwardens. About the same time the
ntion of the leaders of this new democr;
the proceedings of the Police Commissioners, and they in
vened in a manner, and with results, graphically describee
one of their prominent spokesmen. !i Considerable dissatis-
Archibald Prentice. " had for several ; een
manifested by a portion of the inhabitants of Manchester with
1 Impartial Remarks cm tie Xecessttg or XoK-Seeessibf of am Immediate Ciamge
in tie CotuHimtiou of tie Police Bairn (Manchester 1827
266 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
the management of its municipal affairs. There was no elective
authority in the town. The Boroughreeve, who by ancient
custom rather than of right, exercised the functions of a mayor,
and the Constables who were at the head of the day police, were
elected at the Lord of the Manor's Court Leet, by a jury nominated
by the Lord of the Manor's steward. The Police Commissioners,
whose duties were to superintend the night watch and the paving,
sewering and lighting of the town, consisted of such persons as,
being assessed on a £30 rental, chose to come forward and take
the oath of office. The inhabitants had no control over the first
class of officers ; and they had long shewn themselves as anxious
to apprehend Radicals and put down reform principles, as to
detect thieves and prevent theft and robbery. The Police Com-
missioners, abetted by the Court Leet Officers, were in like
manner apt to forget municipal duties in political, and there was
a suspicion that, provided their servants and the tradesmen
they employed were sufficiently ' loyal,' there would not be a
very sharp inspection of their accounts/' Prentice proceeds to
say that an additional source of dissatisfaction arose when gas
became a necessary to the shopkeepers. " At that time the con-
sumption of gas was confined almost to the shopkeepers and
publicans. It was not used in warehouses, offices or dwelling-
houses or small factories, and the large spinning establishments
made their own. Probably not one-fourth of the ratepayers
were gas consumers. The small trader, whose shop, situated in
some dark and narrow street, required much artificial light,
complained that the enormous warehouses of the Bridgwater
Trust, and the great factories of the Birleys, the McConnells,
the Murrays and the Houldsworths paid nothing towards the
supply of the town's lamps with gas, while the whole of that cost
was defrayed out of the profits derived from excessively high
prices. A struggle was made by those who believed them-
selves to be unduly taxed to have a reduction of the burden.
Those who escaped from this fair share of contribution, and
thought that the gas consumers paid only a reasonable price for
their light, opposed themselves fiercely to any reduction of the
charge, which at that time was 14s. per 1000 cubic feet. The
question became almost one of politics, and was discussed with
more than political rancour. The taxed shopkeeper was the
Radical ; and the untaxed warehouseman was the Conserva-
STORMY MEETINGS 267
tive. 1 The reformers, beaten on every division, began to ask
questions as to their numbers, and as everybody who was assessed
upon a rental of £30 a year was eligible, it was not difficult to
persuade many to go and take the qualifying oath and gain the
opportunity of putting a check to oppression. The same facility
was presented to the other side, and great numbers qualified to
protect the town's funds from ' spoliation.' 2 . . . Thus the
meetings of Commissioners were constantly becoming more
numerous and more stormy, till it was no uncommon thing to see
800 Commissioners present at a meeting and to witness proceed-
ings as little deliberative and decorous as we sometimes see in
the front of the hustings at a contested election." 3
These stormy meetings, of which graphic descriptions exist, 4
1 This description is confirmed by other contemporary accounts, of which
we append a specimen : " The gas is supplied by the Commissioners who
executed the works out of public funds of the town — not by a company ; and
the question at issue is whether the profits of the gas establishment shall be
applied in aid of the general police fund for improving the town, or whether
these profits shall go to reduce the price of gas to the consumers. There are
two parties in the town, the ' high ' and the ' low.' The high party consists
of the persons who are favourable to the gas profits being applied to the public
improvements, and the low party to the price of gas being reduced to the
consumers. The existing distinctions in general politics of Whig and Tory do
not apply to this question . . . the higher classes generally favouring the
proposal to apply the profits to public improvements, and the shopkeepers, or
middle classes, who are great gas consumers, contending for a reduction of the
price " (Leeds Mercury, 9th February 1827). The MS. Minutes and contem-
porary reports show that besides their running fight for the reduction of the
price of gas, the new party constantly objected to the delegation of executive
power to committees, and especially to " close committees," sitting in private ;
they wanted the resolutions of the Commissioners to be voted on by secret
ballot ; they disapproved of practically all prosecutions for nuisances ; they
voted against any provision of sewers beyond what was necessary to carry off
storm-water ; and they altogether protested against the maintenance of public
fire-engines. " Let the fire-offices keep engines for the use of those who insured
with them ... if this town would keep none, the . . . fire-offices would keep
engines for themselves, and such would be the competition that the town
would be better served and at no expense " (Report of the Proceedings of a
Meeting of Police Commissioners, by William Whitworth, Manchester, 1827).
2 In the year 1826 the MS. Minutes show that more than a thousand new
Commissioners took the oath of office, over six hundred at one meeting. In
1827 the total number qualified, and, acting for Manchester alone, is said to
have exceeded 1800, and " the numbers attending the meetings have increased
from about 50 to 900, thereby infinitely increasing the difficulties " (Impartial
Remarks on the Necessity or Non-Necessity of an Immediate Change in the Con-
stitution of the Police Body, Manchester, 1827).
3 Historical Sketches and Personal Recollections of Manchester, by Archibald
Prentice (Manchester, 1851), chap. xx.
4 See, for instance, the Report of the Proceedings at a meeting of Police Com-
missioners, by William Whitworth (Manchester, 1827).
268 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
soon made government impossible. All parties were agreed as
to the necessity for a change in the constitution. The Whigs
and Tories coalesced in support of a bill, promoted by a majority
of the Commissioners, to enable all £25 householders to elect
240 Commissioners having a qualification of £25, whilst leaving
the price of gas unfettered. The Radicals furiously resisted
this at every stage, demanding both a lower franchise and a
lower qualification, the representation of wards in strict pro-
portion to their population, and the limitation of gas profits to
ten per cent on the capital outlay. Both parties sent deputa-
tions to London and spent money freely. Eventually the fight
ended in a compromise, concluded at the very last moment, after
the House of Lords Committee had begun to decide on the bill.
The Commissioners conceded a £16 franchise for electors and a
£28 qualification for candidates, these amounts being in both
cases doubled as regards publicans. The price of gas was left
unfettered. The representation of the several wards was made
proportionate to population and assessment combined, seats
being redistributed every fourteenth year. 1
The new body, which carried on the municipal work of
Manchester until 1842, was a well-organised and efficient repre-
sentative council, including in its ranks most of the leading men
of the town. 2 Its administrative procedure was definitely pre-
scribed by the Act, so far as its two main committees were con-
cerned, the Gas Directors and the Improvement Committee,
which were each to consist of 30 members appointed for three
years, of whom one - third retired annually. These two com-
mittees exercised a good deal of independent authority, merely
reporting to the general body. The Commissioners appointed
four other committees, 3 which sat weekly or fortnightly. But
the Commissioners were not completely an elective body. The
Boroughreeve and the two Constables, who were, as we have
1 This little struggle cost the majority of the Commissioners £1162 and
their opponents £1145. The former sum was naturally voted from the Police
rate, and the Commissioners offered to do the same for their opponents' costs
— an offer at first virtuously declined hut eventually accepted.
2 Among these we may name such commercial and manufacturing magnates
as .John Edward Taylor, J. E. Brotherton, W. Nield, Samuel Brooks. Mark
Phillips, Thomas and Richard Potter, J. Garnett, Thomas Hopkins, H. H.
Birley, It, H. Greg, G. W. Wood.
s Accounts, Finance, Watch (including Nuisances and Hackney Coaches)
and " Lamp, Scavenging, Fire Engine and Main Sewers."
ENERGETIC ADMINISTRATION 269
seen, merely the nominees of the Lord of the Manor's Court Leet,
were Commissioners ex officio, and exercised great influence in
the administration. The Boroughreeve always presided over
the meetings, and was, moreover, both Treasurer and Chairman
of the Accounts Committee, whilst one Constable was always
Chairman of the Watch Committee and the other of the Lamp,
Scavenging, Fire-Engine and Main Sewers Committee.
The Commissioners went energetically to work. They adopted
formal standing orders of quite modern type, and directed
that there should be a printed notice and agenda circulated
before each meeting. 1 A public accountant was called in to
audit the receipts and expenditure and prepare a statement of
accounts, which was printed and published. A professional
valuer was appointed to revise the assessment of the town, with
instructions to include every kind of property. The collection
of rates was systematised and regularly checked. The manage-
ment of the little force of night police was overhauled, and the
number of men increased by fifty per cent, their hours of duty
being reduced and the old-fashioned watch boxes being discon-
tinued, as " they hinder rather than promote service." 2 The
paving of the town was taken seriously in hand, a separate com-
mittee being appointed for " Paving and Soughing." 3 The
main sewers were extended ; two paid inspectors were appointed,
and nuisances were sternly suppressed. A Town Hall was built,
and certain minor street improvements were undertaken. The
municipal trade in gas grew apace, and the abundant profits
were the mainstay of the Commissioners' finances. Thus, they
still continued to execute improvements out of current revenue,
often having temporarily to borrow on the personal security of
1 These standing orders were published ten years later in Bye Laws made,
ordained and constituted by the Commissioners for Cleansing, Lighting and
Regulating the Town of Manchester for the regulation of their own proceedings
(Manchester, 1838).
2 MS. Minutes, Police Commissioners, Manchester, 25th August 1830. The
Commissioners were enterprising enough to send their principal officer to
Birmingham, Edinburgh and Glasgow to enquire how these towns managed
their watch, scavenging, fire brigade, lighting, hackney coaches, and assessment
of rates. His report, a volume of 200 pages of closely written manuscript,
preserved in the Manchester Town Hall, presents a unique and valuable picture
of the technical details of municipal organisation in 1828-1829. This tour re-
sulted in a new volume of Regulations for the Government of the Watch Department
of the Manchester Police (Manchester, 1830).
3 MS. Minutes, Police Commissioners, Manchester, 31st August 1831.
" Soughing " = sewering.
270 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
the Commissioners themselves. 1 They soon found, however,
that this primitive finance was inadequate for the expanding
needs, and on this and other grounds, they successfully promoted
new bills in 1830, 1831 and 1832, greatly extending their powers. 2
Throughout these years the policy of the majority of the Com-
missioners remained what would now be termed " Progressive,"
that is, in favour of increased municipal enterprise and extended
municipal regulation. Thus in 1834, on a motion by the Radical
minority that the gas-works should be sold to the highest bidder,
the spokesman of the majority made an emphatic declaration
in favour of municipalisation which might be to-day repeated by
the leader of the Labour Party in the London County Council.
" It was highly desirable," urged Thomas Hopkins in a remark-
able speech, " that the inhabitants of a large town like Manchester
should have the ownership of works like the gas-works, and
amongst the many reasons why the works should be retained a
1 It is worth recording that when they decided to build a Town Hall, 180
of the. Commissioners pledged themselves personally to the bankers in a bond
for £20,000 to secure the necessary advances. This bond was not returned
and cancelled until 1829 [ibid, 4th November 1829). The Town Hall, until
lately used as the Public Reference Library, was in these years a subject of
great municipal fondness and pride. It was fearfully and wonderfully decorated
inside, during 1831-1834, by an Italian named Aglio, who inveigled the leading
Commissioners into granting him the job. These decorations, which cost £5000,
were simply painted out by a subsequent generation having a different taste.
(British Architect, 21st July 1876.)
2 See report of Committee appointed to consider the amendments needed
in the Police Acts, MS. Minutes, 16th December 1829. Among the new pro-
visions in the 1830 Act may be mentioned the following. Coffee houses and
cookshops are to close at 11 r.M. (on Saturdays, at midnight), and not to open
before 4 a.m. in summer and 6 a.m. in winter. Publicans are to provide urinals.
All doors and gates on the road are to be made to open inwards. No cranes
are to be allowed above the first story. No new street or court is to be less
than 24 feet in width. When half a street is built, the owners may be required
to pave and drain it. The wandering of swine in the streets is prohibited
under substantial penalty. Every householder is required to cleanse daily the
footway in front of his house, and in times of frost to lay sand down before
9 a.m. The Commissioners are authorised to provide a public weighing-machine,
and to set up a mounted police force.
In 1830 we find them, at the instance of J. E. Taylor and Thomas Hopkins,
keenly alive to the danger of allowing the new "steam locomotive railway"
the use of the streets. With reference to the proposals of the Stockport and
Manchester Railway Company to cross a main road "at grade," they resolve
"that (lie said company ought to in' prohibited altogether from bringing
lor, .motive engines into the town of .Manchester, whether moved by steam aid
or otherVi ise, and thai their traffic should be carried on through the said town
of Manchester by means of horses only, which should not in any easo move
through any of the streets at a greater speed than at the rate of three miles
an hour " (MS. Minutes, Manchester Police Commissioners, 24th February 1830).
RADICAL OPPOSITION 271
very important one was breaking up the streets. . . . He con-
ceived also that water works and markets should always belong
to the town, and some progress should be made to obtain the
ownership of these. ... It was of importance that the gas
should be good, but what security would there be for its being
good if the works went into the hands of a joint stock company ?
Their interest would be to make as much money as they could.
. . . For these reasons he considered that all public works
should belong to the town or be under the control of the public,
for they generally acted under the influence of more elevated
feelings than those whose principal aim was profit. . . . The
absence of a number of things of this kind in a town constituted
its decline, but a number of advantages of this description gave
it prosperity. . . . Instead of giving up what the town at
present possessed, a plan of action should be laid down which
would bring under the control of the town everything which
ought to belong to it." 1
But the change in the Commissioners' constitution, which
transformed them into a democratically elected body, did not
abate the opposition to their proceedings. The shopkeepers
discovered that the compromise of 1828 had resulted in retaining
in power the influential Whigs and Tories who had for many
years dominated the counsels of the Commissioners. Against
them there raged during the whole of this decade a noisy and
persistent minority of Radicals and nonconformists, among whom
we may name Archibald Prentice, 2 J. Wroe, John Hampson,
P. T. Candelet, 2 Wm. Whitworth, Thos. Wheeler 2 and G. H.
Winder, 2 who represented the shopkeepers and publicans. This
party combined the advocacy of a crude and simple democracy
with objection to all collective regulation or municipal enterprise,
a demand for a reduction of the price of gas, and the defence of
the small property owners. We see them demanding that no
important step should be taken without a poll of the inhabitants,
and that all property or rating qualification, either for voters or
candidates, should be swept away. They objected to the com-
pulsory purchase of houses for improvements, and they strongly
denounced as confiscatory the levying of the cost of main sewers
on the owners of the property benefited. They grumbled inces-
1 Manchester Times, 25th January 1834.
2 These were subsequently members of the Town Council.
272 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
santly at the increased activity in the way of regulation of the
streets and prosecution of nuisances, protesting that the Com-
missioners " favoured the rich, whilst they enforced the utmost
rigour of the law against shopkeepers and the poor, and the
reason was that 18 of them were occupiers of warehouses." x
They objected to any increase of the watchmen, and to the
" excessive salaries " which, as they alleged, the Commissioners
paid to their officers. They " saw no need of employing profes-
sional assessors at an expense of 5 to 10 guineas per day each.
. . . Why should not the mode of making a new assessment be
left open to the leypayers in general, who were well able to tell
what sort of assessment they wanted. . . . He would engage to
find men who would assess more equitably than any professional
man, gratuitously, and upon rack rent. . . . By their exclusion
a door was opened to the employment of any number of jobbing
professional valuers." 2 It was considered " most infamous "
that the Improvement Committee should hold " secret meet-
ings," to decide which properties should be purchased, as "all
public proceedings should be as public as the sun at noonday." 3
It was alleged " that the Improvement Committee and the Gas
Directors consisted each of 30 members, and that 24 of these 30
were members, some of 4, some of 3, some of 2 committees. The
Improvement Committee sat in a comfortable room at the Town
Hall, determining what part of a man's, property they would take,
and then one of them said, ' Oh, how shall we get the money for
these improvements ? ' another would say, ' We are eighteen of
us also on the Gas Committee, we are sure to have a majority,'
and they had just to step into another room, and then decide how
much the consumers should pay for their gas in order to raise the
money for carrying these cursed improvements into effect." 4
1 Manchester Guardian, 14th April 1832.
2 Speeches by Prentice and Wroe at meeting of Commissioners, Manchester
Times, 11th January 1834.
3 Wheeler's Manchester Chronicle, 12th January 1833. The Manchester
limes, 2nd April 1836, gives a good description of a deputation of these shop-
keepers appearing before the House of Commons Committee and interviewing
Lord Shaftesbury, as Chairman of Committees of the House of Lords, in
opposition to the Police Commissioners' Bill of 1836. In addition to the
above objections, they demanded compensation for "fixtures and goodwill"
of tradesmen expropriated. Lord Shaftesbury allowed the insertion of a clause
giving compensation "for all loss and damage, instead of good will." He
si id, " I do not like the words ' good will.' "
* Meeting of property owners, reported in Manchester Guardian, 1832.
WORK OF THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS 273
But the most heinous crime of the Commissioners was their
constant attempt to increase their statutory powers. In April
1830 a vigorous handbill was issued by the Radicals denouncing
the Commissioners, not only for preparing a bill without con-
sulting the inhabitants, but also for inserting clauses enabling
them to borrow a capital sum of £25,000 for the extension of
the gas works, and giving them powers of municipal regulation
" too vexatious and oppressive to be safely entrusted to any body
of men." x
The Radicals urged, moreover, that the election of the Com-
missioners should be annual ; that all ratepayers should be
entitled to vote ; and that the qualification for candidates should
be reduced. They sent a deputation to London, which secured
these concessions. 2
We have described at some length the policy and proceedings
of both the majority and the minority of the Manchester Police
Commissioners, not only because it was, right down to its merger
in the Town Council by the Act of 1842 (6 & 7 Vict. c. 17), in
many ways the most important local governing body of the time,
but also because their respective views are curiously typical of
succeeding generations of municipal politicians. We now leave
them to consider the general results of the whole three hundred
bodies of Improvement Commissioners.
The Work of the Improvement Commissioners
We do not know how many of the three hundred bodies of
Improvement Commissioners resembled, in their working, each
of the four examples that we have described. We imagine that
the ninety or a hundred bodies at work in the parishes which
now make up the Administrative County of London did not
differ very widely from the " Trustees of the Cubitt Estate,"
except, perhaps, in being usually less honest and even more
inefficient. From our information as to the two hundred bodies
in provincial towns, we infer that the great majority approximated
much more nearly to the example of Plymouth than to those
of Birmingham or Manchester. Judged from any modern stand-
point, we imagine that their actual results in the way of town
1 Copy in MS. Minutes of Police Commissioners, Manchester, 14th April 1830.
2 A Statement of Facts, being a History of the Opposition to the Police Bill,
by Thomas Walker, Manchester, 1832.
T
274 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
improvement were not great. In fact, the outstanding achieve-
ment of the Commissioners, alike in London and in the provincial
towns, and certainly the most durable, was the new stone pave-
ment which was provided for the main thoroughfares. This
was not, as it would be to-day, regarded as a work of sanitation.
Indeed, we shall fail to understand the efforts of the Improvement
Commissioners unless we realise the limits of the contemporary
conception of their functions. Nowadays the dominant idea of
municipal government is the improvement of the public health.
This, however, never occurred to any of the Improvement Com-
missioners of whom we are speaking. Right down to the cholera
epidemic of 1831-1832, we find practically no suggestion that any
work of town improvement should be undertaken on the ground
that it would promote the public health. From 1748 to 1832 the
long series of Local Acts were obtained, and all the expenditure
on town improvement was incurred, not from any motives of
sanitation, but in order to secure, incidentally, greater protection
for life and property, and primarily and invariably greater comfort
and convenience in passing along the streets. The Commissioners
were, in fact, often called Street Commissioners, and it was
principally in order that the thoroughfares of the towns might
be better regulated that the Local Acts were passed. The
statutory bodies arose simply because neither the Court Leet
nor the Municipal Corporation, neither the Parish nor the Justices
of the Peace, possessed the necessary coercive or regulative powers
to deal with the town streets.
It is true that, as we have already explained, all public streets
were, as they still are, legally parts of the King's Highway, and
as such came within the network of obligation imposed upon
the parish by the general law of highways to keep open a free
passage for the King and his subjects. A street might, and
frequently did, form part also of a turnpike road, and as such
was subject to the general turnpike law and the particular turn-
pike Act. With all this we have dealt at length elsewhere.
But a street was, in fact, if not in law, more than a parish highway
or turnpike road. 1 When the public way <;ime to be surrounded
1 The word "street," said Lord Chelmsford in a judgment, "does not
mean the roadway, but a thoroughfare with bouses on each side " (Galloway
v. Corporation of the City of London, . - !"> L.I. Oh. 493). But it need notneees-
ily be paved, Dor continuously bordered by bouses, nor even a thorough-
(are. See The Story of the King's Highway, by 8. and J5. Webb, 1913.
THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS 275
by a mass of population, walled in by houses, made a place of
resort as well as transit, incessantly traversed by men, beasts
and vehicles, and used by night as well as by day, it required a
higher degree and greater variety of collective action than was
necessary on even the most frequented thoroughfare between
one town and another. If the ordinary turnpike road needed
to be straightened and widened, levelled and furnished with an
artificial surface, the street required all this in a higher degree.
But there were also new requisites peculiar to the street, and
unprovided for in highway or turnpike law and administration.
Channels along the thoroughfare itself to carry off the pent-in
rain-water, special accommodation for foot passengers, systematic
removal of the inevitable mud and filth which impeded free
passage, were all requirements of the urban thoroughfares.
Hence the need for fresh powers and, as it seemed, for new
Local Authorities, to make passable the streets of the growing
towns. We now seek to describe the way in which these statutory
authorities provided the higher degree and new kind of service
required for free passage along the town streets, as distinguished
from the parish highway and the turnpike road. This superior
service — apart from the regulation of personal conduct in the
suppression of nuisances, and the beginnings of a police force,
with both of which we hope to deal in subsequent volumes —
consisted mainly in providing a pavement and in clearing away
the dirt and refuse.
In the latter part of the seventeenth century we find the
" high streets " and market-places of many of the ancient towns
already paved with rounded stones, sloping to the middle, where
there was a kennel or " denter stone " to carry off the water ;
and provided in some cases with footways on each side, dis-
tinguished from the carriage-way by elevation, by lines of posts
or, occasionally, by the shape of the stones. 1 These conveniences,
1 The administrative history of street paving in England has engaged little
attention, so that we can cite practically no authorities beyond the incidental
references in contemporary newspapers and pamphlets, the MS. Minutes of
Town Councils, Vestries and Improvement Commissioners, and the very casual
mention of the subject in local histories, as given in our footnotes. We have
unfortunately been unable to find any minutes or other archives of the " Com-
missioners of Scotland Yard," under the Act of 1662. The History of London,
by William Maitland, 1756, embodies brief descriptions of the Metropolitan
streets at different epochs. The Paper read before the Institution of Civil En-
gineers on the Construction of Carriage Way Pavements, by Bryan Donkin, 1824,
276 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
it is obvious, were beyond the resources of the Statute Labour
and Team Duty required by the statute of 1555, even if supple-
mented by the limited Highway Rate which Quarter Sessions,
at the very end of the seventeenth century, was empowered to
authorise. Moreover, we know that, in the City of London and
elsewhere, these street pavements, gutters and footways had
existed long before any statutory obligation to repair the high-
ways had been cast on the parish and its officers. To trace the
origin of these ancient pavements, to discover how far they had
been constructed by the effort and at the expense of the burgesses
themselves or of the Municipal Corporation, the lord of the manor
or a private benefactor, the parish or the frontagers, is outside
our province. What is clear is that there was no general pro-
vision, at common law or by statute, either for their construction
or for their maintenance. It is in the Local Acts, which we have
described particular towns obtaining from Parliament, first in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and then from the latter
part of the seventeenth century onwards, that we find a new legal
obligation imposed on the holder of a tenement abutting on a
street, to pave and keep in repair the pavement in front of his
tenement, down to the denter stone or channel which marked
the middle of the thoroughfare. The history of street paving
from the latter part of the seventeenth century down to the
present day largely consists in the evolution of this personal
obligation, and its gradual supersession by a specialised organ
of collective administration acting by salaried officials and hired
labour, and maintained by uniform poundage rates on all
occupiers.
The London Pavements
We deal first with the Metropolitan area. The history of the
construction of the London street pavements — the immemorial
pavement of the ancient City ; the extension of this to the great
thoroughfares leading eastward and westward, northward and
may bo cited as perhaps the first of the long series of technological writings
nn the subject, which are mostly to be soujihl in the proceedings of the technical
institutions. Bee, for the modern practice, The Mini iri pal and Sanitary En-
r'a Handbook-, by II. Percy Boulnois, 1883; or (in America) Treati
and Pavements, by I. 0. Baker (New Fork, 1914), and Textbook of High-
way Engineering, by A. II. Blanchard ami II. i'.. Downe (New York, 1913),
762 pp.
THE LONDON PAVEMENTS 277
southward ; from thence to the " high streets " of the City of
Westminster ; the gradual paving during the eighteenth century
of such outlying parishes as St. George's, Hanover Square, St.
Marylebone and St. Pancras, and, in the early years of the nine-
teenth century, of some of the streets of Chelsea and Kensington
— affords an example of the origin and development of a colossal
public service, the very memory of which has now passed away.
For the purpose of our present work we do not need to probe the
antiquity of the pavements within the City walls, or to discuss
the statutes by which Tudor Parliaments compelled the front-
agers between Strand Cross and Charing Cross, 1 between Holborn
Bridge and Holborn Bars, between Aldgate and Whitechapel
Church, and those in Chancery Lane and Gray's Inn Lane,
to pave these much-frequented highways. 2 After a long interval
we find, immediately after the Restoration of Charles the Second,
the first of the modern Paving Acts, a temporary statute of 1662.
This Act set up, for London and Westminster, the so-called
" Commissioners of Scotland Yard " that we have described.
We do not find anything about the activities of these Com-
missioners after the close of the seventeenth century ; but the
Act of 1662, made permanent and extended to the whole Metro-
polis within the " Bills of Mortality " by an elaborate Act of
1691, governed for over seventy years the paving activities of
the inhabitants. 3
1 Already in 1320, after a petition to Parliament, two commissioners had
been appointed by the King to insist that the frontagers of the Strand should
repair the pavement in front of their houses (1 Rot. Pari. pp. 302-303).
2 24 Henry VIII. c. 11 (Strand Paving Act, 1532) ; 25 Henry VIII. c. 8
(Holborn Paving Act, 1533) ; 32 Henry VIII. c. 17 (Whitechapel Paving Act,
1541) ; see also 34 & 35 Henry VIII. c. 11 and 12 (1543) ; 13 Eliz. c. 23 (1571) ;
23 Eliz. c. 12 (1581) ; 3 James I. c. 22 (1606).
3 13 & 14 Car. II. c. 2 (1662) ; 2 William and Mary, sess. 2, c. 8 (1691).
A further Act of 1697 (8 & 9 William III. c. 37) enabled the justices to extend
their orders to pave to the whole surface of streets lying partly in and partly
out of the limits of the Bills of Mortality. The City of London had its own
Acts, 19 Car. II. c. 3 (1668) and 22 Car. II. c. 17 (1671).
The reconstruction of the City after the Great Fire of 1666 does not appear
to have led to any important alteration of the carriageway pavement. It was
in vain that Evelyn pleaded for a flat pavement, and wished " that the use of
sleds were introduced and as few heavy carts as might be countenanced. . . .
Why [should] not some of the distorted bricks to be found amongst the rubbish
be reserved for these purposes, especially the elevations destined for the foot
causeways before the fronts of the houses ? Unless they will be at the charge
to lay it with Purbeck and flat stones, which indeed were to be preferred.
Yet their clinkers in Holland do well ; and, as I remember, the Roman streets
are so paved " {London Restored, not to its pristine, but to a far greater Beauty,
278 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
By the Act of 1691 every householder abutting on one of the
streets already paved was once more 1 definitely required to
maintain in repair the pavement in front of his tenement, down
to the " denter-stone " or channel in the middle of the roadway.
Moreover, the Middlesex or Surrey justices in Quarter Sessions
were authorised, on the motion of any local magistrate, to require
the householders of any unpaved street to pave it according to
their directions. Unfortunately the law was, so far as concerned
the majority of streets, neither obeyed nor enforced. 2 That
even the primary obligation to repair existing pavements con-
tinued to be very imperfectly fulfilled we may infer from the
Commodiousness and Magnificence, by Sir John Evelyn (circa 1666) ; quoted
in the History of London, by William Maitland, 1756, pp. 449-450). These
suggestions were, as regards the carriage way, not adopted, and the City
Commissioners of Sewers in HS71 directed the " high streets " to be " paved
round, or causeway fashion." The provision of distinct foot pavements may
have become somewhat more general in the rebuilt streets, together with the
adoption for these of flat stones. The Commissioners, indeed, order that " the
breadth of six feet, at the least, from the foundation of the houses, in such
of the high streets which shall be allowed to be posted, shall be paved by the
inhabitants or owners with flat or broad stone for a foot passage," under
penalty of a fine of five shillings for every week that they remain unpaved
after notice given (ibid. p. 454 ; see the Rules, Orders and Directions published
by the Commissioners of Sewers pxirsuant to the Act of the Common Council of
1st March Vi71). But it is plain that these orders were not generally obeyed.
In 1684 the Grand Jury " take notice of the great defects of the pavements,
and ill passage thereby, in and about this City, to the hindrance and danger
of His Majesty's subjects passing in and about the several streets as well by
night as by day." They present twelve householders to be prosecuted " for
not repairing the same " (Presentment by the Grand Jury . . . at the Old Bayley,
1684).
1 Besides the Act of 1662, and those relating to the City of London ex-
clusively, that of 1534 (25 Henry VIII. c. 8), whilst confining its injunctions
for the making of a pavement to the frontagers of Holborn, had extended its
penalties for failure to maintain pavement in repair to Southwark; and the
half-dozen other local paving Acts had already covered a wide extent of what
was then the Metropolitan area.
2 The records of the Middlesex Quarter Sessions contain a certain number
of these justices' orders to pave particular streets, and, after 1691, even to
afford them such light as might be furnished by the lantern that each house-
holder was directed to set up, from dark to midnight ; see Calendar of the
Sessions Books, 1689 to 1709, by W. J. Hardy, 1905, pp. xxii, 27, 38-39. 40,
46, 48-50, 53, 56, 59-60, etc. (Further volumes have been prepared, down to
1717, and may be consulted in typescript, but have not yet been printed by
Quarter Sessions. This should now be done.) In 1744-174(1 we see the Middle-
Quarter Sessions in some cases ordering the inhabitants to perform their
"Statute work'" on Bp vilied highways; in others, sanctioning Highway Kates by
particular parishes, the proceeds of which were spent by the parish authori-
. and in others, again, appointing committees of justices to " oversee the
work" of paving by the " paviour " (MS. Sessions Books, vols. 1020-30).
PAVEMENT BY THE HOUSEHOLDER 279
complaint of the Committee on Nuisances appointed by the
Middlesex Quarter Sessions in 1721, when the plague was raging
at Marseilles, on which occasion extracts from the Act of 1691,
reciting the penalties incurred by persons " not paving their
doors," were printed for general circulation. 1 But even where
some respect was paid to the law, this method of obtaining a
pavement proved very unsatisfactory. In an able pamphlet of
1745 this system of paving is described as one of the principal
public nuisances of the Metropolis : ' By the statute of the
2nd and 3rd William and Mary the inhabitants are at their own
expense directed to pave with stone or gravel, or otherwise
amend all the ground in the front of their houses to the middle
of the street, as the justices shall order, with penalties in default
of paving or mending. This regards new pavements, but no
power is given by that statute to inspect or view the pavements
when made, so as to order amendments when and where wanted,
or the manner of paving when first or wholly paved, all which
is absolutely necessary to provide for, as also to preserve them
against inequality of paving. Now one housekeeper mends or
paves with small pebbles, another with great, a third with rag-
stones, a fourth with broken flint, a fifth is poor, a sixth is able,
but backward and unwilling. This last is worst of all, and nothing
but law can force them ; and yet for the sake of peace, or a more
sinister end, it is but rare that the law is put in execution. Neigh-
bours will not complain of one another ; it may be their own
turn. Thus . . . there is no standard for paving, the subsisting
laws not sufficient and even those we have neglected to be carried
into any execution." 2 We may indeed affirm, on the authority
of Northouck, that right down to the accession of George III.,
" no considerable reformation had taken place in the pavement
since the Fire of London." In many of the City streets, and a
few others, 3 " they had indeed flat pavements on each side for
1 MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Middlesex, 12th October 1721.
2 Public Nuisances Considered, 1745, an able and instructive anonymous
pamphlet. It was long before the idea of individual paving could be got rid
of. It was still to the fore in 1754, when John Spranger, the first advocate of
the improvements shortly afterwards carried out in London, made it the basis
of his project that notice be given to the inhabitants individually to put in
repair the pavement in front of their several houses, as far as the " denter
stone," or middle of the street.
3 Strype, in 1720, describes " the fine freestone pavement secured from
carts and coaches by handsome posts set up " in St. Martin's Lane, then newly
improved (Stow's Survey of London, book vi. p. 18 of Strype's edition of 1720).
28o THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
foot passengers, but these were very negligently repaired. . . .
The middle of the streets were paved with large pebbles of all
sizes and shapes, rough to the horse and uneasy to the rider,
which, continually worn by carriages into dangerous holes, the
mud lay in too great quantities to suffer the streets to be called
clean, except in extreme dry weather, when the dust was as
troublesome as the dirt while wet." x By the middle of the
eighteenth century the state of the Westminster streets in
particular had become an intolerable scandal. In 1754 two
remarkable pamphlets called attention to " the frequent and
But Maitland, in his History of London (1756) mentions a " freestone pavement "
for foot passengers as an exceptional advantage of particular thoroughfares.
And Nollekens gives an anecdote proving that hackney coaches could drive so
close to the houses as to enable a man to scramble from the roof of the coach
into a first-floor window (Nollekens and his Times, by John T. Smith, 1829 ;
quoted in Place MSS. 27826-123). Old prints (see the magnificent collection
in the London Library, supplementing that of the British Museum), for the
first half of the century, show the round pebble pavement to have usually
extended, at any rate outside the principal streets of the city, continuously
from house to house. The flagged footways did not, indeed, at once commend
themselves to everybody. When John Spranger proposed, in 1754, to pave
the carriage-ways of Westminster and Marylebone with broad Purbeck stone,
he suggested the paving of the footways with " good pebbles " (A Proposal
or Plan for an Act for the Better Paving, etc., by John Spranger, 1754).
1 Reports on the Diseases of London and the State of the Weather from 1S04
to 1816, etc., by Thomas Bateman, 1819, p. 15. Even Han way, in 1754, assumed
that the concave form of the roadway, and the central channel, must be retained.
He describes the " great inconvenience . . . we labour under in respect to our
kennels. It is too well known that they are ma"de with a sudden fall of four,
five and six inches, and some yet deeper, like a broad-cut cart rut. This seems
to be the remains of those days when these cities were about one-tenth part
so big, had not a twentieth part so much trade, nor a hundredth part so many
carriages for ease and luxury as at present. . . . But now in our miles of
streets, how often we must pass, and with what uneasiness and danger ! This
may be easily remedied when the streets are new paved. The kennel ought
to be constituted by the easy decline of the street, and terminated in the
division of two equal sides, by moderate-sized denter stones. . . . The passing
the kennels, or lowest part of the streets would then he hardly perceived by
the rider ; horses would tread true, whereas the kennel is now often ooncealed
with dirt ; they would consequently be in less danger of laming themselves, of
falling, or being otherwise injured. Carriages would no longer be subject to
overturn or to break their wheels by a sudden shock. I'pon this principle the
collection of dirt would be a little more divided, yet if cleansed twice a week.
as proposed, the quantity would never he great " (A L> tt< r to Mr. John Spranger
on his Excelh nt Proposal for cleansing and lighting tin struts of Westminster, by
Jonas Hanway, 1 7.">4, p. 13). As late as 1840 ('apt. Vetch. R.E., in an al
memorandum on the structural arrangements of new buildings and protection
of the public health, proposed to reintroduce the central kennel instead of side
Mere, as likely to give greater cleanliness; see General Report of the Poor
Commissioners mi tl« Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population, 1842,
Appendix V. pp. 391-392.
SIDEWALKS FOR PEDESTRIANS 281
melancholy distresses and disasters," the " fatal mischiefs "
and " dismal accidents " caused by the daily " struggle with
unequal, rough and broken pavements." 1 " All the pavements
of the streets," said a discontented citizen to Jonas Hanway,
" are made according to every man's humour ; some are made
high and some low, some with kennels and some without, some
well done and some ill." " One can hardly find," adds Hanway
himself, " five yards square of true even pavement " in the whole
of Westminster. In the opinion of contemporaries the only
redeeming feature, besides the use of flat " flagstones " in a few
streets to mark off separate footways, was the erection of lines
of posts to protect the streams of pedestrians from the carriage
traffic. " The use of posts," said Hanway, " which I believe
is peculiar to us, is an excellent security to the foot passenger,
and the modern method of making them short and stout is a
great improvement." 2 That the carriage-way should be rough
' and irregular, even to the point of dislocating wheels and breaking
axle-trees, was commonly accepted as inevitable. " Ever since
I was a boy of two feet and a half high," said one good citizen
to Hanway, " I have known people, gentlemen of long heads,
talk of paving streets ; but it can't be done, Sir. ... In the
first place, all the pavements of the streets are made according
to every man's humour, some are made high, and some low,
some with kennels and some without, some well done and some
ill. But this is not all, Sir ; 'tis the waterworks which destroy
the pavements, and do you think that ever that will be mended ?
Why, Sir, the owners of the waterworks are most of them Parlia-
ment men, Sir, all great men. Do you think that any one will
be able to oblige them to repair the pavements they breakup. . . .
1 A Proposal or Plan for an Act . . . for the better Paving, Lighting and
Cleansing the Streets, Lanes, Courts, Alleys and other open passages, and for
Removing of Nuisances . . . within the several parishes of . . . Westminster
. . . Marylebone, etc., by John Spranger, 1754 ; A Letter to Mr. John Spranger
on his Excellent Proposal for cleansing and lighting the Streets of Westminster, etc.,
by Jonas Hanway, 1754.
2 " It is true," he adds, " they occupy a considerable space " — they were,
it is clear, a constant cause of obstruction in the crowded streets — but their
utility was proved to Hanway by the experience of the French towns, where
there were no posts, and "the gentleman as well as the mechanic who walks
the streets of Paris is continually in danger of being run over " (A Letter to
Mr. John Spranger, etc., by Jonas Hanway, 1754, p. 20). Foreign visitors
admired these footways, imperfect as they were, fcr being thus " defended by
posts from the coaches and wheel carriages " (Gonzales, Voyage to Great Britain,
1730 ; printed in Pinkerton's Voyages, vol. ii. of 1808 edition, p. 90).
282 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
I am sure it can't be done." x But Han way persevered in his
practical way, until, in 17G2, Sir Charles Whitworth brought the
subject before the House of Commons, and got a committee
appointed to enquire into the methods to be adopted for the better
paving of the streets of Westminster and the adjoining parishes —
a committee which reported, to use the summary of its chairman,
" That the streets in general were very ill paved and cleansed ;
that the method of taking care thereof by the Annoyance Jury
was ineffectual ; that the method of the inhabitants paving
before their own houses, without being limited either in time,
materials or method of doing it, is one cause of the bad pavement
of the streets ; that the squares, streets, lanes and allies were
not properly lighted ; that the paving, cleansing, repairing
and lighting, as well as removing nuisances, and making the
town more ornamental and commodious should be put under
the management of Commissioners ; that in most places a new
pavement was absolutely necessary instead of the old one ; but
that the expense would be too great to be borne wholly by the
inhabitants." The result was an Act of Parliament in 1762,
which, with the quickly following amending Acts, brought about
a complete change in the situation. 2
The Westminster Paving Acts of 1762, 1763, 1764, 1765
and 1766 started a new era. Whilst retaining and emphasising
the obligation of the householder to maintain existing pavements
in repair, these Acts empowered an influential body of Com-
missioners themselves to undertake the paving of new streets
or the repaving of old ones, according to a systematic plan ;
1 A Letter to Mr. John Spranger, etc., by Jonas Han way, 1754.
1 Report of House of Commons Committee to consider proper methods for
the better paving, enlightening, etc., the streets ... of Westminster, Maryle-
bone, St. Giles, St. George-the-Martyr, St. George, Bloomsbury, St. Andrew's,
Holborn, Liberties of the Rolls, the Savoy and the Duchy of Lancaster, in
Journals, vol. xxix. p. 233, 15th March 1762; 2 George 'ill. c. 21 (1762);
3 George III. c. 23 (1763) ; 4 George III. c. 39 (1764) ; 5 George III. c. 50
(1765) ; 5 George III. c. 13 (Sunday Toll Act, 1765) ; 6 George III. c. 54
(1766) ; 7 George III. c. 101 (1767) ; 11 George III. c. 60 (1771) ; Observali„u.s
on tlie new Westminster Paving Art, by Sir Charles Whitworth, 1771. 'I
Acts were amended and continued by 26 George III. c. 102 (1786) and 30
George III. c. 53 (17!t(i).
These Act3 did not apply to the small areas already dealt with by their
<>\ui Local Acts, such as St. James's Square (under 12 George 1. c. 25), Lin-
coln's Inn Fields (under S Cenrgo II. c. 26), and Golden Square (under 24
George II. c. 27), nor yet t,> Dean's Yard and the adjacent area dealt with by
the Dean and Chapter of Westminster.
THE WESTMINSTER PAVING COMMISSIONERS 283
and to expend for this purpose, not only a special Parliamentary
grant of £5000 and the proceeds of an extra Sunday toll to be
collected at all the principal turnpike gates, but also a rate up to
eighteenpence in the pound upon all the occupiers within the
area benefited by the improvement. The rate could not be
levied on the householders of any street or place until the new
pavement had been completed there ; and its annual payment
exonerated them from all further responsibility for the main-
tenance of the roadway. 1 Hence the old individual system of
each householder repairing his own bit of pavement, at his own
charges, and the new collectivist system of the service being
undertaken by a public authority and paid for out of a common
rate, went on side by side. The option between the two systems
had been, by the original Act of 1762, made to rest exclusively
with the Commissioners. By the amending Act of 1765 this
option was extended to the owners and occupiers of any street
or place, who could, by a three-fourths majority, require the
Commissioners to begin operations, raising the necessary capital
by a special loan on the security of the future paving rate to be
levied on that particular street or place. This form of local
option seems to have been extensively used by the inhabitants
of the better streets in Westminster (especially as it was provided
that, in computing the three-fourths majority those owners
and occupiers who did not attend the meeting should be deemed
to have consented to the proposition), and it appears to have
greatly expedited the work of the Commissioners, by enabling
the borrowing of the necessary funds.
The Westminster Paving Commissioners went energetically
to work, and we find in contemporary writings abundant appre-
ciation and criticism of " the new pavement." The old rounded
pebbles, with " neither tail nor foot " so that " they roll about
1 These reforms had been proposed a couple of decades before by the author
of the able pamphlet from which we have already quoted. " If the care and
management of the pavements was lodged in one Trust, with a sufficient power
not attended with great expense, first to take a survey of the streets, lanes, etc.,
then to break up the present pavements, and to order a uniform pavement of
all the streets afterwards, the whole to be paid for by an annual small levy
upon the housekeepers in general . . . forbidding afterwards the breaking up
any pavement, or laying any pavement anew, but by the order or consent of
such trust only, or by those paviors who should have power under the Trust
for this purpose, the streets would then be well laid with one equal pavement
at first, and be afterwards kept in repair at a small charge, and all this done
without complaint or punishment " {Public Nuisances Considered, 1745, pp. 5-6).
284 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
and hit one another incessantly upon a bottom which is nothing
else but a heap of old dirt," 1 were replaced by squared blocks
of " whin-quarry stone or rockstone ... of a flat surface," 2
imported from Aberdeen, and set continuously in parallel lines
from curb to curb, on a slightly convex surface. For the channel
or denter stone, running down the middle of the old concave
street, were substituted two gutters, one on each side of the
carriage-way. The footways, now universally nagged, were
made about four inches higher than the gutters, thus enabling
the lines of protecting posts to be dispensed with. 3 " The new
pavement . . . goes on with rapidity," reports a pamphleteer in
177 l. 4 Foreign visitors to London waxed eloquent over the new
conveniences, which became the wonder of the travelled world.
Archenholtz, in 1787, in describing the transformation which
had taken place within a generation, especially praises this
" superb pavement . . . which cost £400,000." There " is a
footpath," he adds with naive admiration, " of hewn stone for
those who walk, on which they are in no danger from carriages or
horses. No coachman without incurring a penalty of twenty
shillings dare encroach upon that footpath." 5 " L'on ne saurait
1 A Tour to London, by M. Grosley, 1772, vol. i. p. 33. The translator
notes that this observation of 17G5 would not be accurate in 1772.
2 A Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain, edition of 1769. vol. ii.
p. 121 ; Birkbeck Hill's edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, vol. vi. p. lxvii.
Dr. Johnson noticed in 1773 that " New Aberdeen is built of that granite
\\ hioh is used for the new pavement in London " (Piozzi Letters, i. 110 ; Birk-
beck Hill's edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, vol. v. p. 85). A visitor in
1802 relates that " In the streets you admire that extraordinary neatness,
which is to be met with nowhere else but in Holland. The ways for foot-
passengers are paved with broad flagstones " (^1 Foreigner's Opinion of England,
by C. A. G. Gocde, translated by Thomas Home, 1821, vol. i. p. 192). For other
references to the new pavement, see British Chronicle, 13th- 15th February 1765 ;
Gentleman's Magazine, December 1773 ; Metropolitan Guide and Book of
Reference, by Pigot & Co. (about 1820) ; Travels in England, by C. P. Moritz,
17117.
3 The lines of posts protecting the footway from vehicles seem to have
been mostly cleared away from the City and Westminster al><mt 1762-1780.
They remained in Lower Thames Street in 1804 (Modern London, by Richard
Phillips, 1804, p. 107); and in ls.'M it was said that ""within the last twenty
yc mis there were posts and rails to divide the footway from the road on Groom's
Hill." Greenwich {Greenwich : Us History, Antiquities, Improvement* and Public
Buildings, by if. S. Richardson, 1834, p. 14).
4 Critical Observations on the Public Buildings and Improvement* in London,
1771, p. 23.
6 A Picture of England, by Archenholtz, 1789, p. 130. Moritz in 1782 had re-
mark- .1 that ■" the footway paved with lar^e stones on both sides of the street
appears t.> a foreigner ezcei dinj Ly convenient and pleasant, as one may there
THE " GREATEST MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE " 285
inventer rien," writes a still more enthusiastic Frenchman, " de
mieux pour circuler dans une ville que les trottoirs de Londres,
trop rarement imites ailleurs, et toujours imparfaitement ; ils
sont revetus de grandes dalles ... si unies que Ton y marche
sans fatigue, ainsi que Ton retrouve avec une veritable peine les
paves raboteux et glissants du continent." 1 To slow-minded
and penurious patriots, the " new pavement " seemed a fantastic
extravagance, rendered more objectionable at that moment by
the fact that the stone was brought from Scotland. " We
shall not have a foot of English ground to walk upon," writes a
satirical denouncer of " the new method of paving streets with
Scotch pebbles." " In new modelling our streets," he con-
tinues, " the Scotch, and their adherents, Scotified Englishmen,
pretend that our advantage, and the improvement of the place,
are their sole motives, and that they are entirely disinterested
. . . whereas ... I affirm . . . that the Scots are the only
gainers by this Quixotic scheme." 2 "I had not been long
landed," writes, in 1767, " An Old Englishman " lately returned
from America, " but I beheld in every part of the town the
streets unpaved." He was told that the object " was to pave
them in a fashionable manner that our grandees and gentry may
ride with greater ease over the stones ; but," continued he, " the
poor feel little benefit from it, for they think, as well as myself,
that the money that is expended about it could be put to better
use, while every necessary of fife bears such an exorbitant price
as it does at present." 3 But in spite of these isolated complaints
from " the meaner sort," public opinion agreed with Sir James
Steuart, the most distinguished economist of the day, in regarding
(already in 1767) " the new pavement of London " — by far the
greatest municipal enterprise that had then been undertaken in
walk in perfect safety in no more danger from the prodigious crowd of carts
and coaches than if one was in one's own room, for no wheel dares come a
finger's breadth upon the curbstone " (Travels in England, by C. P. Moritz,
1797, p. 498).
1 L'Angleterre au commencement du dix-neuvieme Steele, par M. de Levis,
1814, p. 49.
2 A Seasonable Alarm to the City of London on the present Important Crisis,
showing that the new method of paving the streets with Scotch pebbles, and the
pulling down of the signs must be both equally pernicious to the health and morals
of the People of England, by Zachary Zeal, 1764 ; a rare pamphlet in the Bodleian
Library.
3 British Chronicle, 19th and 21st August 1767.
286 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
Great Britain — as a valuable example of wise public expenditure
on improvements. 1
The authority of the Westminster Paving Commissioners
stopped at Temple Bar, the boundary of the old City ; but
within its walls the pavement of the principal streets had become
relatively good early in the eighteenth century. Already in the
seventeenth century we find the householders compelled to
employ the City paviors — men specially appointed for this work,
who were sharply reprimanded by the Common Council when
the repairs were executed in an unworkmanlike fashion, or in
disregard of the convenience of passengers. Hence the City was
distinguished for its flagged footways in the principal streets, as
well as for its uniformly constructed carriage-ways, even at the
opening of the century. But the improvement of the City pave-
ments did not, after 1762, keep pace with that of Westminster.
" While the inhabitants of the West End of the town," writes
a discontented citizen in 1765, " are taking every expedient to
make their streets commodious, it must give inhabitants of
other parts no little concern to see the palpable inattention
which is shown to theirs. Among a variety of other places
which are to the last degree disagreeable and inconvenient, the
pavement in Fetter Lane is in so wretched a condition that
there is scarce a possibility of passing." 2 In the last decade of
the century the Times more than once animadverts on the im-
perfections of the City pavements, which it attributes partly to
quarrels about jurisdiction, and partly to the neglect and lack
of supervision of the City paviors. 3 Somewhere about this
time, however, the Commissioners of Sewers for the City, in
whose hands the work lay, seem to have adopted a systematic
plan for paving the carriage-ways with the same stone as that
used in Westminster. From the interesting report of the Clerk
1 Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy, 1767, by Sir James Steuart,
vol. iv. p. 317 of 1805 edition of his Works.
2 British Critic, 13th-15th February 1765.
8 Times, 4tb April 1794 ; also, five years later, " A few clays since the axlc-
fcree of a carriage was broken in descending the slope of Blackfriars Bridge, in
consequence of the very large hole at the bottom of it on the Surrey side,
which is in th" highest degree dangerous. We are no! certain that an indict-
ment would not lie against the Trustees of the Surrey Roads for the scandalous
manner in which they are kept. They vie with the paviors in some parts of
the City, and we know not which are the most inattentive, not to say worse
of them. It is not to be conceived the number of horses that are foundered
by holes in ti be and roads " {ibid, ">th October 1799).
REVERSION TO PAROCHIALISM 287
of the Bristol Street Commissioners, who went to London in
1806 to see how the paving was managed, we learn that the
City Commissioners insisted for the carriage-way on the use of
Scotch granite from Aberdeen, and for the footways on Purbeck
flags ; that they employed for each of the twenty-five wards, a
single responsible pavior, whose labourers set the stone in
screened gravel, according to a carefully drawn specification ;
and that they appointed a salaried surveyor and no fewer
than four salaried inspectors to supervise the work in their
one square mile of streets. 1 From this time forward we hear
no complaints of the City pavements.
Whilst the City of London was emulating the Westminster
Paving Commissioners of 1762-1771, the pavement outside the
walls was again giving rise to complaints. The Act of 1771 had
set up, under the Commissioners, in Westminster and some
adjoining parishes parochial committees, to which, by a retro-
grade step, the most important executive work was transferred.
The householder's obligation to repair the pavement having
been swept away, the state of the street now depended entirely
on the public authority. The dozen separate parochial com-
mittees, each raising its own rate, making its own paving con-
tracts and appointing its own inspector — composed, in fact, of
cliques of the notorious " Select Vestrymen " of the time —
proved to be more anxious to emancipate their parishes from
the control of the Commissioners in contracts and works, and
to diminish the local paving rate, than to keep their streets in
such a state of repair as would serve the convenience of the
whole Metropolis. One by one these Vestries secured from a
heedless Parliament separate Local Acts withdrawing their
parishes from the jurisdiction of the Westminster Paving Com-
missioners, 2 until that body, reduced to the supervision of only
a few streets, ceased to function.
1 MS. Minutes, Improvement Commissioners, Bristol, 17th June 1806.
2 22 George III. c. 44 (St. Margaret and St. John, Westminster, 1782) ;
c. 84 (St. George's, Hanover Square, 1782) ; 23 George III. c. 42 (St. Paul,
Covent Garden, 1783) ; c. 43 (St. Anne, Soho, etc.) ; c. 89 (St. Clement Danes,
1783) ; c. 90 (St. Martins in the Fields, 1783) ; 29 George III. c. 75 (St. George's,
Hanover Square, 1789) ; 30 George III. c. 53 (optional streets in St. James's,
St. Giles's, St. George's and St. Andrew's, 1790) ; 34 George III. c. 96 (Foundling
Estate, in St. George the Martyr and St. George's, Bloomsbury, 1794). The
Paving Committees of the parishes were apparently in 1798 still submitting
their contracts for confirmation to the Westminster Paving Commissioners
(see MS. Minutes, Paving Committee, St. Margaret and St. John, 4th September
288 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
Meanwhile there were springing up, outside the area both of
the Corporation of the City of London and of the Westminster
Paving Commissioners, miles of new streets and squares, extend-
ing continuously in all directions. 1 Some of these districts, like
the extensive parish of St. Marylebone, were governed by power-
ful Select Vestries, which, under their own Local Acts, were
compelling the householders to compound for their obligation
to pave, and were themselves carrying on extensive paving
operations partly by contractors and partly by squads of work-
men in direct employment. 2 In the equally important parish of
St. Pancras, on the other hand, each great landowner, or the
knot of new householders on a particular estate, had obtained a
separate Local Act, applicable only to a few streets and squares,
leaving the intermediate parts of the parish without any kind of
pavement or paving authority. Many of the main arteries of
road traffic were in the hands of the different Turnpike Trusts,
the paving powers of which varied according to their several
Local Acts, and the actual extent and quality of the pavements
according to their financial resources. 3 Such open Vestries as
1798). The Commissioners must, we assume, have obtained in 1807 a renewal
of their Acts of 1765 and 1786 granting them the Sunday Toll (47 George III.
c. 38), and must have continued to receive its proceeds, doubtless applying
the same to the liquidation of their debt. But we hear no more of their pa\ ing
activity. In 1817, on the passing of Michael Angelo Taylors Act, the Com-
missioners, whose meetings had become very perfunctorj^ reduced their small
establishment, and their proceedings became more formal and lifeless than
before. Their minutes are among the archives of the City of Westminster.
1 " After the peace of 1763," we are told, " the North of the Metropolis,
. . . extended with surprising rapidity, St. Marylebone and the parish of
St. Pancras especially. The new mode of paving commenced about the same
time, previous to which few of the streets had level footpaths for passengers,
but were formed with small stones, and for the most part with a gutter down
the middle " (Leigh's New Picture oj London, p. 19 of ninth edition, 1839).
2 At the Marylebone Vestry in 1800 J. A. attended and prayed " the Board
to order Nottingham Mews in this parish to be paved. Resolved that a Com-
mittee of Survey be requested to view the said Mews, and report their opinion
thereon to this Board at some future meeting." Three weeks later, it is " Re-
solved that Nottingham .Mews be paved according to the application of J. A.
for that purpose, as soon as the composition money shall be paid for such
paving " (MS. Vestry Minutes, Marylebone, 1st and 22nd February 1800).
3 When most of the Turnpike Trusts north of the Thames were consolidated
in h.ti, as wo have described in a previous chapter, the new Metropolitan
Turnpike Trustees received, by 7 (Jeorge IV. c. 14:!, full power to pave, repair
and repave all these roads, in whatever way they thought lit. as well as to
license frontagers to put down such footways, etc., as the Trustees m
approve. Under this authority we gather that maoadamised surfaces la
replaced the squared stone "setts."
DECA Y OF LONDON PA VEMENTS 289
Chelsea and Kensington contented themselves, either with the
road administration of particular Turnpike Trusts, or with the
results they could obtain, under the ordinary parochial powers,
by means of money compositions for Statute Labour and the
limited Highway Rate. " Some of the parishes," it was said
in the House of Commons, " were so poor that they could not
defray the expense attending the proper pavement of their
streets, and others were so divided among themselves on almost
every occasion that they sat debating like a petty House of
Commons, and neglected their most important duties." x With
such a chaos of authorities, each pursuing its own policy, or
lack of policy, the new pavement laid down between 1762 and
1780 by the Westminster Paving Commissioners rapidly deterior-
ated under the heavy traffic, whilst, especially in the newer
quarters of the Metropolis, many streets, and even whole districts,
remained mere muddy receptacles for water and filth.
The increased attention paid to road communication at the
beginning of the nineteenth century was presently reflected in
a growing discontent with the state of the streets of the Metro-
polis. '' The pavement of London," contemptuously remarked
a distinguished amateur road constructor. " is utterly unworthy
of a great metropolis." 2 In 1811 the Chairman of the Grand
Jury at the Middlesex Quarter Sessions called their special
attention to the state of the highways. " I mean more par-
ticularly," he said, " the streets, squares, lanes and other
thoroughfares of the Metropolis ; that they are in many places
in such a state of decay and want of repair as to be not only
highly inconvenient, but absolutely unsafe and dangerous, and
that, too, in many of the most populous parts." He proceeded
to point out that even the most essentially urban thoroughfares
" are highways and are indictable if not kept in repair " ; whilst
Local Acts for the better management of streets, etc., "will not
indemnify any . . . parish against the general law, if highways
are suffered to fall into a state of decay, unless some particular
body of men or individuals are specially bound to repair them.
A highway continued in a state of decay for a length of time is
a public nuisance, whatever private jurisdiction it maybe under." 3
1 Hansard, 7th March 1815, vol. xxxiii.
2 Essay on the Construction of Roads, by R. L. Edgeworth, 1813, p. 7.
3 Address to the Grand Jury at the Middlesex Quarter Sessions, 2nd December
1811, by William Main waring, Chairman, 1811, p. 4.
U
2 9 o THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
Acting on this direction, the Grand Jury formally presented
Piccadilly, one of the streets that had been paved by the West-
minster Commissioners, as being out of repair, and the wealthy
and respectable parish of St. George's. Hanover Square, found
itself indicted for the offence of failing to maintain this public
highway. The Vestry's " Committee of Paving " could not deny
the bad state of the roadway, and, after taking the opinion of
the Attorney-General, the Vestry decided that it was incumbent
on the Vestry " and not on any other body to answer to the said
indictment." A committee of nine members was accordingly
appointed to conduct the defence. The verdict was adverse,
and the Paving Committee of this richest and best-governed
parish in the London lying outside the City walls was driven
reluctantly to put its most frequented thoroughfare into decent
repair. 1 But the method of indictment was " found too dilatory
and expensive to punish or to prevent " 2 the neglect of the London
parishes ; and was, moreover, not strictly applicable to the new
service of paving, as distinguished from ordinary road repair. 3
Nor did the parishes feel that they were entirely to blame.
During these years the continuous tearing up of the streets for
the new pipes of the gas and water companies was affording the
Paving Committees an excellent excuse for procrastination,
whilst rendering the nuisance of broken pavements and dangerous
holes more intolerable than ever. At last, in 1814, a zealous
and public-spirited Member of Parliament, Michael Angelo
Taylor, began a vigorous agitation for reform. In an opening
speech he drew the attention of Parliament to the wretched
state of the streets, the depredations of the water and gas com-
panies, and the continuous neglect of the Local Authorities. 4 In
the following session he introduced a Bill to establish a Metro-
politan Board of Paving Commissioners, to be appointed by the
1 MS. \ Vstry Minutes, St. George's, Hanover Square, 14th December 1811
and 23rd May 1812.
- Report of House of Commons Committee on the State of the Pavement
in (lie Met ropolis, L816, p. c.
3 Al Manchester, the Improvement Commissioners insisted on the parish
doing its duty by the highways of the town, though these had heroine streets.
But they were advised by counsel that they had no power " to compel the
landowners or the Surveyors of the Highways to keep and maintain the paving
and tiaLTLriiiLT in repair. The surveyors by the Highway Act arc at liberty
[either] to pave or gravel the streets and footpaths as they may judge neces-
sary" (MS. Minutes, Improvement Commissioners, Manchester, 1808).
1 Hansard, 28th June I si I.
MICHAEL ANGELO TAYLOR 291
Government, from among persons owning at least £300 a year
in freehold property, or worth £10,000 in personalty, and to
exercise a regulating, inspecting and compelling jurisdiction over
all the various local bodies within a radius of five miles from
the centre, throughout a district comprising, as was noted with
alarm, no fewer than 867,933 inhabitants, living in 122,366
houses, of an aggregate annual rental of more than three millions
sterling. 1 This Bill, which is interesting as affording the first
known outline of anything like a municipal authority for the
Metropolis as a whole, met with the determined opposition of
all the hundreds of separate authorities within the proposed area,
the powerful and exclusive Select Vestries of St. George's,
Hanover Square, and St. Marylebone, being supported by such
open and Radical Vestries as Chelsea and Kensington, and by
the innumerable smaller bodies of Paving Trustees or Com-
missioners scattered throughout the Metropolis. Instigated by
the Vestrymen of Marylebone, frequent conferences of :t de-
puties " organised the " lobbying " of Members, and even set
on foot a house-to-house agitation by the parish beadles, whilst
petitions opposing the Bill poured into Parliament. Popular
and local prejudices were excited against the proposed " new
Commissioners and Police Magistrates, with discretional power,
at the pleasure of their perambulating hired inspectors, to
summon the former Commissioners and gentlemen, as well as
clerks, like culprits to remote, and to police offices . . . and to
compel the parishes and districts to defray the charges which
1 Hansard, 21st February 1815 ; Report of a meeting of the Paving Trustees
of St. Luke, Middlesex, in Times, 12th April 1815.
As an alternative to Michael Angelo Taylor's proposal of a superior
Metropolitan authority, regulating and controlling all existing local bodies,
an able correspondent of the Times — said to have been John Rickman —
put forward in January 1816 a plan of dividing the Metropolitan area among
about half-a-dozen separate Paving Boards, acting for the City, Southwark,
Westminster, etc., superseding all existing bodies, and each independently
appointing its own paid officers to execute the necessary works — an early
suggestion of what was, eighty years later, termed the " tenification " of
London instead of its unification {Times, 2nd January 1816, etc., republished
as Eight Letters concerning the Pavement of the Metropolis and the adjoining
Turnpike Roads, by X. Y., 1817). On the other hand, an influential witness
in 1828 suggested, as the only effective reform, the transfer of all the paving
and lighting of the Metropolitan parishes, together with the watching, to a
central office under the Home Secretary — the system, that is, of the Metro-
politan Police (Report of House of Commons Committee on the Police of the
Metropolis, 1828, pp. 120-122).
292 THE I Ml' MOVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
they . . . impose, without any remedy against caprice, extor-
tion or abuse, and even without appeal." 1 The Vestry of
Marylebone declared that its pavements were both in excellent
order, and efficiently administered, and threw itself with energy
into the organisation of the opposition to any outside interfer-
ence. 2 We find the Paving Trustees for St. Luke's Parish assert-
ing that they " possess and exercise under the Local Act all the
powers which are necessary to pave, repair and preserve the
pavement of the streets " ; that but for " the temporary evil "
of " the useful increase of water companies, and the establish-
ments " for the " supply of gas," the pavement of their streets
would be a model of " cleanliness, durability and comfort " ;
and that " no causes exist within their jurisdiction for just
complaint or for the introduction of any other interference and
control." 3 The Chelsea Vestry vehemently urges that " it has
no paved carriageways " within its whole area, and that a
paving rate " would contribute greatly to the depopulation of
this parish," 4 whilst St. George's, Hanover Square, haughtily
resolves that the Bill is " very objectionable in most of its parts,
and totally unnecessary for this parish." 5 Baffled by this
united opposition, Michael Angelo Taylor had to withdraw his
Bill, and content himself with a Select Committee to enquire into
the State of the Pavement of the Metropolis. 6 This Committee
proved to be time-serving and timid. . Its meagre report threw
the whole blame for the bad pavements on the then unpopular
gas and water companies, and failed to grapple with, or even to
set forth, the difficulties created by the multiplicity of separate
paving authorities, and the absence, in many places, of adequate
paving powers. AVithout attempting to remedy the constitu-
tional chaos into which the government of the Metropolitan area
had sunk, the Committee fell back, practically as their only
proposal, on the intervention of the individual householder.
1 Times, 12th April 1815.
- MS. Vestry .Minnies, St. Marylebone, 1th April, 13th May, lltli November,
16th and 30th December, 1816, 12th March 1816.
:i Report of meeting of the Paving Trustees of St. Luke's, Times, L2th April
1815.
1 MS. Vestry Minutes, Chelsea, Middlesex, 17th April 1816.
5 Ibid. St. George's, Sanover Square, loth April 1816.
,; Hansard, 25th April 1815, 7th March 1816. A Blightly different account
of these proceedings is given In an MS. note prefixed to the British Museum
copy of the pamphlet [Eight Letters, etc.) mentioned above.
M. A. TAYLOR'S ACT 293
They did not, indeed, revert to the system of individual responsi-
bility for the pavement, but they attempted to transform every
aggrieved householder into a common informer. ' The first
remedy," they report, " should be afforded by the establishment
of an universal power for every housekeeper to compel the
speedy and effectual reparation of any pavements dangerous to
persons traversing the streets of the Metropolis, without the
trouble and changes of an indictment. And that for that pur-
pose, Surveyors of Pavement should be appointed in every
district by the different local Commissioners ... to whom
notices of any dangerous pavement may be immediately given,
and who shall be compelled, by summary proceedings before
magistrates, under heavy penalties, to repair, with all con-
venient expedition, every dangerous defect of which such notice
may be given." 1 Michael Angelo Taylor made the best of the
situation. Finding it impossible to overcome the opposition of
the existing bodies to any central authority for the Metropolis as
a whole, he adopted the futile proposal of the Committee as the
ostensible basis of his Bill. But, as it passed into law in the
session of 1817, his Act contained a great many valuable enact-
ments. Its 147 clauses included provisions enabling minor
street improvements to be effected with comparative cheapness
— provisions which have, right down to the present day, con-
tinued to be used with advantage. It added cleansing, street-
watering and house-numbering to the duties of paving authorities.
It practically consolidated for the Metropolis the law relating
to street nuisances, and by a series of drastic penal clauses
curbed the depredations of the gas and water companies. And
though the Act did nothing to compel the inefficient or apathetic
Paving Authorities to do their duty, it gave, to all the more
energetic and ambitious of them, wide scope for improvement.
By sweeping general clauses most of the limitations and short-
comings of their respective Local Acts were removed ; they
were authorised to extend their jurisdiction over neighbouring
streets destitute of any paving authorities ; their powers of
repaving were widened ; their potential paving rates were doubled
or, in some cases, trebled, and the assessment and collection of
these were facilitated ; whilst by various administrative clauses
1 Report of House of Commons Committee on the State of the Pavement
in the Metropolis, 1816.
294 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
each separate authority was enabled, if it chose, to put its internal
organisation on an efficient basis. 1
Unfortunately, however, it was soon demonstrated that the
failure to create a central body of Commissioners had, as regards
paving, taken all the driving force out of Michael Angelo Taylor's
reform. In how many districts the new Surveyors of Pavements
were actually appointed we have been unable to ascertain. We
have found absolutely no trace of their activity, and we imagine
that the office was everywhere conferred upon the existing clerk
or surveyor or superintendent of the Paving Authority, who
gained thereby only one empty title the more. The aggrieved
householder certainly did not become a common informer,
and neither the Vestries nor the multifarious Paving Boards
showed any disposition to use the permissive powers of widening
their jurisdiction which the Act conferred on them. Some little
improvement did, however, take place. The gas and water
companies were gradually brought into the habit of making good
their constant devastations as quickly as possible. One or two
of the wealthier and more progressive of the Metropolitan Vestries,
alarmed by the attack on their autonomy and stimulated by
the series of Parliamentary enquiries between 1819 and 1833 on
the means of communication, seem, during the next twenty years,
to have made good use of their powers. We see, for instance, the
energetic Select Vestry of Marylebone making extensive purchases
of granite in Aberdeen, and permanently employing a staff of
between fifty and a hundred paviors and labourers, divided
into twenty companies, some of whom, dispersed among the
nine districts, were " traversing each square and street to repair
and fill in the holes in the carriageways of the parish," whilst
others, under the Parish Surveyor and three salaried super-
intendents, were kept at work paving the new streets that were
1 " Michael Angelo Taylor's Act," as this 57 George III. c. 29 of 1817 has
ever since been called, remained for nearly forty years the main basis of London
Btreet law, and is still in operation as regards some of it s sections. Though
applying to all the various parishes and districts in the Cities of London and
West minster, the Borough of Southwark, and the " Bills of Mortality," together
with St. Marylebone and St. Pancras (which were thus for the Qrst time made
part of the Metropolitan area), it is classed and printed as a Local Act, and is
thereby excluded from the ordinary editions of the Statutes. An edition, with
notes, was published in 1S.'!!I under its full title. An Art for Better Paving,
Improving and Regulating tin Streets of the Metropolis, and removing ami pre-
renting Xuisanccs and Obstructions therein, 1839.
SOME ENERGETIC VESTRIES 295
being continually opened on its northern and western sides. 1
In 1828-1830 the Paving Committee was busily occupied in the
extensive task of tearing up the old squared stone pavement
of the carriage-ways — now regarded as intolerably noisy, dusty
and destructive to horses and carriages 2 — and replacing it by
a " macadamised " road, charging the householders along the
route one-third more rate, and executing the work whenever
requested by two-thirds of the rated occupiers. The Select
Vestry of St. George's, Hanover Square, was enlightened enough
in 1824 to engage the eminent road engineer, Thomas Telford,
to report upon the whole of the pavements of that parish, and
largely to govern itself by his professional experience. 3 But
this progressive policy was, we fear, characteristic of only a very
few of the Metropolitan Vestries. Over the greater part of the
rapidly extending range of streets, the pavement evidently con-
tinued in a disgraceful state. Complaints are rife of " sprained
ankles " and " shoes filled with mud," owing to " the wide,
gaping intersections or interstices between the paving stones " ;
of " falling horses " and smashed-up vehicles, due to the un-
evenness of the surface ; and of " deafening noise " and " blinding
dust " which passers-by and inhabitants had alike to endure. 4
In the great Parish of Lambeth, on the south, as in that of
Christchurch, Spitalfields, immediately to the east, it is reported
by Francis Place in 1824, as the result of his own inspection,
1 MS. Vestry Minutes, St. Marylebone, Middlesex, 30th December 1815,
12th March 1816, 10th February 1821, 11th July 1829, 13th November 1830.
2 See, for instance, Considerations on the Defective State of the Pavements of
the Metropolis, by William Deykes, 1824, p. 8 ; Practical Instructions for the
Improvement of the Carriage Pavements of London, by J. C. Robertson, 1827 ;
Practical Treatise on Making and Repairing Roads, by Edmund Leahy, 1844,
pp. 66-72 ; the latter of whom tells us that pavements have been "generally
superseded by broken stones, which . . . may be said to be the general mode
of making and repairing roads " (p. 66).
3 " Report respecting the Street Pavements, etc., of the Parish of St. George,
Hanover Square," by Thomas Telford, June 1824, printed as appendix to
A Treatise on Roads, by Sir John Parnell, 1833, pp. 348-361.
4 See, for instance, Considerations on the Defective State of the Pavement of
the Metropolis, by William Deykes, 1824, pp. 8-10. In contrast with the
undoubted superiority of the whole of London paving in 1770, in 1827 it can
be claimed only that London excels Paris and other cities in its footways
(Practical Instructions for the Improvement of the Carriage Pavements of London,
by J. C. Robertson, 1827, p. 15). " At the time of our visit to Paris," writes
a traveller of 1826, " the Rue de la Paix was the only street which was provided
with a footpath " (Frederic Hill: An Autobiography of Fifty Years in Times
of Reform, edited by Constance Hill, 1894, p. 63).
2g6 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
that various streets, courts and alleys were " still paved [only]
with pebbles and without any flagstone footpath ... in a very
dilapidated state." x Almost under the shadow of the Houses
of Parliament, Horseferry Road was, in 1825, a slough of mud and
filth, which the Vestry of St. Margaret's, Westminster, was then
only beginning to survey, 2 whilst the outlying Parish of St. Paul,
Deptford, was, in 1824, actually under indictment at Quarter
Sessions for the non-repair of its streets as common highways. 3
But it was in the districts of the four or five score of independent
Paving Boards, " self-appointed and irresponsible," and publish-
ing " no accounts of their receipts and expenditure," 4 that
" the evils of discontinuity, variety and inequality " 5 of pave-
ment were most rampant. In the Parish of Bermondsey, for
instance, which was, by 1831, becoming covered with a network
of densely peopled courts and alleys, surrounding the wharves,
tanneries and manufactories, the pavements provided by the
five separate Paving Authorities varied from street to street, in
every degree of unevenness, fracture and neglect. 6 Even in
the new squares of Belgravia, as late as 1835-1836, innumerable
complaints are brought before the Cubitt Estate Trustees — the
sole Paving Authority for that area — of dangerous and dilapidated
footways, pavements so much lower on one side than the other
that kitchens were frequently flooded with liquid filth and storm
water, posts so placed as to upset carriages, and unprotected
cellar areas amounting to dangerous precipices. 7 The adminis-
tration of the paving of the great Parish of St. Pancras, which
in 1801 had still only 31,779, and by 1831 numbered o ei
a hundred thousand inhabitants, remained for the whole
1 Tlace MS. 27827-52/54.
2 MS. Vestry Minutes, St. Margaret, Westminster, 7th March 1S25.
3 Ibid. St. Paul, Deptford, Kent, 11th March 1824.
1 Local Government in the Metropolis, 1835, p. 21.
' Report of House of Commons Committee on the Police of the Metropolis,
1828, pp. 120-122.
8 "Thus Bermondsey Street and several of the streets issuing out of it
are parts of the East Division of Southward a paving. . . . Long
Lane forms a separate district, under aunt her Act of Parliament for paving.
. . . The waterside division of the parish has also a separate \< f of Parliament
for their purposes. The Grange Road and parts adjaceni has als,> a separate
Act. . . . And the Bermondsey New Road forms pari of the Kent I
(Turnpike) Trust for these purposes" {History and Ai Equities of the Pariah of
Bermondsey, by Q. \V. Phillips, 1841, pp. 110-111).
7 MS. Minutes. Cubitt Estate Trustees (now among the archives of 'lie
We bminstei I Lty Council). 23rd October 1835 ei seq.
THE CHAOS OF ST. PANCRAS 297
of that generation a caricature of Local Government. For
this area of little over four square miles, there were no fewer
than nineteen separate paving authorities, the Parish Vestry
being responsible only for about one-twentieth of the ground,
and eighteen different Paving Boards governing as many scattered
patches belonging to the several landowners. And yet, adds
the Parish Surveyor in 1834, " some very closely inhabited streets
and passages in the parish are left without any superintending
care in regard to paving " ; including, as he explains, such
populous districts " as the upper part of Grays Inn Lane . . .
the back road from King's Cross to Bagnigge Wells Tavern
... all the cross streets, courts and alleys between the two
roads, the east side of the road from the Small Pox Hospital to
St. Pancras Workhouse, and all the streets, alleys and passages
branching therefrom." These densely crowded streets, courts
and alleys, amounting to two miles in length, which no public
body was authorised to pave, were entirely " without control,
and the consequence is," he continues, " that the whole district
is in a sad state of filth and dirt." Meanwhile, as the crowning
absurdity, it must be mentioned that, as the local " Church
Paths Rate," out of which the Vestry defrayed its paving ex-
penses, was, by the terms of the Local Act, paid out of the Poor
Rate, and as this was naturally levied equally on the whole
parish, the occupiers of houses in the districts of the eighteen
Paving Boards contributed their quota to the paving executed
by the Vestry, in the one-twentieth of the parish for which
alone it administered this service, in addition to paying separate
local rates for their own paving ; whilst the unfortunate dwellers
in " the uncontrolled district pay the same rate without any care
being bestowed upon them " — contributing, in fact, to the cost
of paving the rest of the parish whilst getting in their own streets
absolutely no paving whatsoever. 1 In this chaotic condition
the administration of the London pavements was destined to
remain for another couple of decades — in fact, until the Metro-
polis Management Act of 1855 reorganised the whole local
government of the Metropolis.
1 Evidence of Surveyor of Highways of St. Pancras, in First Report of
Poor Law Inquiry Commissioners, Appendix A, vol. i. (Codd's Report), 1834,
pp. 54-55.
298 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
The Pavements of the Provincial Toivns
Turning now to the hundreds of towns outside the Metro-
politan area, we see, in some of the ancient provincial cities,
street pavements as immemorial in their origin as those within
the walls of the City of London, and chartered corporations
resorting to Parliament for special paving powers even earlier
than that of the capital city. The special privilege of levying a
toll for " pavage," which the City of London enjoyed, was granted
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by charter or statute
to various boroughs, notably Coventry, Warwick, Huntingdon,
Bristol and Southampton, sometimes only for a limited term of
years, apparently on the assumption that stone pavements
could be laid down, as walls were built, once for all. But however
the street pavement came into existence, there grew up a custom
in these paved towns for the frontager wholly or partially to
keep in repair the part in front of his tenement, down to the middle
of the roadway. This obligation was embodied, as a matter of
course, in the various paving Acts of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, 1 and was apparently enforced in many towns — often,
we imagine, on the strength of mere manorial custom or muni-
cipal byelaw— by the Court Leet or other tribunal under local
control. 2 Thus we are told in 1755 that, in the borough of Hull,
1 In 1320 the University of Cambridge had induced the King to order that
the householders should perform their customary obligation of repairing the
pavement in front of their own premises (2 Rot. Pari. 48). See the Paving
Acts for Northampton (1431), Gloucester (1473), Canterbury (1477), Taunton
(1477), Cirencester (1477), Southampton (1477), Bristol (1487), Ipswich (1571)
and Chichester (1576). The obligation to pave was usually restricted to the
" high streets," or to specified main thoroughfares ; and the Acts were often
limited in duration to a short term of years, though this limitation may not
have affected the customary obligation to repair. The Municipal Corporation
often co-operated with the inhabitants ; sometimes (as at Northampton and
Chichester) undertaking the charge of the pavements in the market-place;
sometimes (as at Chichester) also the "ways of greatest resort" ; sometimes
(as at Hull) supplying the stone ; and sometimes (as at Southampton in 1482)
appointing a Town Pavior, provided with free lodging, who executed the
paving work for t he householders at customary charges (History of Southampton,
by J. S. Davies, 1883, pp. 119-120). See History of Private Bill Legislation,
by 1". Clifford, 1887, vol. ii. pp. 255-268; and Municipal Origins, by F. H.
Spencer, 1911, pp. 178-186.
- We see this at Ipswich, where it was (perhaps merely in pursuance of the
il Act, 13 Kliz. c. 24 of 1571), in 1737, "agreed and ordered" by the
Town Council "that the Sergeants at Mace of this corporation be empoT
to demand and receive the several amerciaments that shall be hereafter assessed
by tin Eeadhoroughs of this borough for defaults in cleansing and paving the
THE PAVEMENTS OF THE PROVINCIAL TOWNS 299
" for the more regular and better paving and repairing of the
streets, ... it hath been customary for the Mayor and Alder-
men ... in common council assembled, from time to time as
they saw occasion, to order . . . the said streets ... to be
new paved or repaired by such workmen as they, the said Mayor
and Aldermen, thought fit ; and the said Mayor and Aldermen
have usually provided proper materials for the paving and re-
pairing . . . and the occupiers of messuages . . . fronting to
the said streets . . . have usually paid the said workmen for
their labour ... so much for every yard square . . . unto
the middle thereof, as hath been from time to time agreed on
and thought reasonable by and between the said Mayor and
Aldermen and the said workmen." x By the middle of the
eighteenth century, however, the citizens of Hull demurred to
this assumption of power, and the Corporation found it necessary
in 1755 to obtain from Parliament a Local Act crystallising the
ancient custom into statute law. Similar statutory authority
was sought at one time or another by nearly every town in the
kingdom.
In the numerous Local Acts passed by Parliament during the
last half of the eighteenth century for different towns, the Hull
arrangement between the individual householder and the local
authority was only one of a bewildering variety. The limitation
of the householder's obligation to the maintenance of the foot-
way, 2 or to the mere repair of existing pavements ; 3 the new
paving to be undertaken only at the request of a majority of the
householders in each particular street, 4 or to be extended to
any streets where such request is made ; 5 the extension of
the frontager's obligation to new works and old, levelling and
streets within the town " (MS. Minutes, Town Council, Ipswich, 12th December
1737). And at Gloucester, which had also an early Local Act (1473), and
where the Court Leet continued to be held by the Municipal Corporation as
lord of the manor, we find it, between 1784 and 1819, not infrequently amercing
householders for allowing the pavement in front of their houses to be out of
repair (MS. Minutes, Court Leet, Gloucester, vol. for 1784-1819).
1 Preamble to 28 George II. c. 27 (Hull Paving, etc., Act, 1755).
2 26 George III. c. 119 (Newport, Isle of Wight, Streets Act, 1786) ; 26
George III. c. 116 (Cheltenham Streets Act, 1786). See, for this variety,
Municipal Origins, by F. H. Spencer, 1911, pp. 178-186.
3 23 George II. c. 19 (Colchester Harbour and Streets Act, 1748).
4 11 George III. e. 9 (Winchester Streets Act, 1770).
5 31 George III. c. 80 (Lincoln Streets Act, 1791) ; 31 George III. c. 62
(Maidstone Streets Act, 1791).
300 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
guttering ; * compulsion on him to execute his share of the work
by specified workmen, 2 or in a specified way, 3 or under the direc-
tion of a public officer ; 4 compulsion on the local authority
itself to pave the market-place or certain ' high streets " 5
(all others being left to the householders) ; to contribute towards
the repair of specially wide streets ; to pave in front of public
buildings or, where no individual can be made to pay, 6 to repair
its own streets in a definite order ; 7 the grant of an option to
the local authority either to compel the householder to perform
the work or exact from him a money composition ; 8 the further
option whether future repairs should be charged to the frontagers
or to a common rate ; finally, the specific exemptions of poor
districts from both advantages and cost of pavement 9 — all
these represent different settlements between the individual
householder and the local authority embodied in the first Local
Acts obtained by different parishes and boroughs. But in spite
of the fact that eighteenth-century paving statutes, unlike
Turnpike Acts, were permanent in their operation, no town
contented itself with a single application to Parliament. In the
various amending Acts that each body of Improvement Com-
missioners secured, we find one uniform tendency — the gradual
supersession of the householder's obligation to pave or repair
the street by the evolution of municipal enterprise. By the
nineteenth century it was rare to find, whether in the first paving
Acts of new urban districts or in the amending Acts of older
communities, either the footway or the carriage-way left in the
hands of the householders. In one direction, however, the
obligation on the individual citizen became more specific and
1 20 George III. c. 21 (Worcester Paving, etc.. Act, 1780) ; 41 George III.
c. 30 (Sculcoates Streets Act, 1801) ; (i Course IV. o. 19(1 (Macclesfield Streets
Act, 18L\-.).
- <) George TIT. c. 21 (Gainsborough Lighting and Paving Act, 17<i;i).
3 31 George IN. c. 64 (Deal Streets Act, 1791).
1 6 George III. <•. .".I (Bristol [mprovement Aot, 17C>.">).
•'■ 13 George 111. «•. 15 (Gravesond and Milton Streets Act, lTTi 1 ).
23 <; ge il. c. I!> (Colchester Barbour and Streets Art. 1748), parish
l" pay fur having adjoining churches and churchyards, and fur places " whore
icnl distress can be made" ; 26 George 111. c. 11!) (Newport, [ale oi
Wight, Streets Act, L786); 31 George III. o. 80 (Lin.',. In Streets Act, L791).
7 1 6 George [II. o. 57 (Weymouth Paving, etc., Act, 177.">) : [6 George 111.
c. :7 (Dorchester Streets A< t. 177.".).
s Hove Pa\ big Act, 1830.
" 12 George III. <•. [8 (Chatham Paving, etc. Act, 1771); l!t George III.
o. 36 (Bridgwater Market and Streets Act, 1778).
" PRIVATE STREETS" 301
more stringently enforced. Prior to 1800 there was seldom
any distinction drawn, as regards paving law, between the most
ancient thoroughfares and new streets in process of construction.
With the rapid outgrowth of new suburbs, the Improvement
Commissioners seem to have become tardily aware of the extrava-
gance of permitting the owners of building estates to saddle the
public with the cost of completing their new streets. Hence
some specially enlightened Local Authorities began to insert
clauses in their amending Acts, by which new streets or courts,
" over which a dereliction of the way for the public shall have
been made by the owner," were required to be properly levelled,
paved, flagged and drained, at the expense of the proprietors,
whenever the Local Authority thought such work necessary. 1
Moreover, it came to be provided that no such new streets should
become repairable out of the common rate until they were
certified to be properly paved and guttered. 2 With this excep-
tion, the responsibility of the private citizen for the state of the
pavement gradually disappears ; its maintenance becomes a
duty of the Local Authority ; and, in some Acts, the individual
householder is even given the right summarily to compel the
Local Authority promptly to put any particular bit of defective
pavement into good repair. 3
This generalised analysis of the paving clauses of the hundreds
of Local Acts passed between 1700 and 1835 may be usefully
supplemented and qualified by concrete examples of the paving
history of particular towns. In many cases the inhabitants
1 50 George III. c. 41, sec. 55 (Hull Lighting, etc,. Act, 1810) ; 11 George IV.
c. 15 (Liverpool Improvement Act, 1S30). But this all-important power was,
by 1835, very far from being general. Leeds, for instance, was seriously feeling
the need of it ; we see the Improvement Commissioners resolving " that it is
essentially necessary that the Commissioners should have power to compel
the owners or occupiers of property adjoining the present and future streets
and public passages in the Township of Leeds, and within one mile of the
boundary of the town, to pave, drain and make all necessary levels opposite
their respective premises " (MS. Minutes, Improvement Commissioners, Leeds,
1st November 1837). For the numerous complicated questions that arise in
connection with this requirement, see The Law and Practice as to Paving Private
Streets, by William Spinks, 1887 ; The Law and Practice relating to Private
Street Works, by the same, 1904, 256 pp. ; The Private Street Works Act, 1902,
by J. Scholefield and G. R. Hill, 1902, 161 pp. ; and Notes on the Law of Private
Street Works under the Public Health Acts, by J. B. R. Conder, 1911, 114 pp.
2 41 George III. c. 30, sec. 23 (Sculcoates Improvement Act, 1801); 50
George III. c. 41, sec. 57 (Hull Lighting, etc., Act, 1810).
3 31 George III. c. 64 (Deal Streets Act, 1791).
302 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
paved their streets without obtaining any statutory power either
to enforce an obligation to repair, or to levy extra taxation.
Thus in 1708 the inhabitants of Maidenhead represent to the
Berkshire Quarter Sessions " that the said town was about
seven years since paved with stone at the great charge of the
inhabitants and the voluntary contributions of the neighbouring
gentry." * So, at Woolwich in 1717, the Vestry observes that
" the inhabitants of this parish have been at very great expense
in paving the town thereof, in doing of which the same is made
more commodious, and of consequence much more healthful to
the inhabitants," who are therefore enjoined to refrain from
sullying the new pavement with refuse. 2 In the little borough
of Peterborough, as late as 1790, the work of paving was accom-
plished by the voluntary subscription of £3000 by the ground
landlords, the Parliamentary representatives, the trustees of the
local charities and the local magistrates. 3 In 1822 we find the
inhabitants of Leicester violently objecting to the grant of any
new rating powers either for paving or for lighting and watching
the borough, services which they thought " ought to be borne
by the wealthier part of the inhabitants exclusively." The
ancient Municipal Corporation, itself a large property owner,
opposed the project for a rate, on the ground " that there is
public spirit enough " to do the work " without subjecting the
poorer inhabitants to any expense whatsoever." 4 The proposed
1 MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Berkshire, January 1708.
2 MS. Vestry Minutes, Woolwich, 25th October 1717.
3 " On Monday last a very respectable meeting was held at the Town Hall
in the City of Peterborough to hear and determine on the different plans of the
Committee for carrying into effect the paving and lighting this ancient and
long neglected city. . . . Earl Fitzwilliam, with that well-known liberality
which the inhabitants have on all occasions experienced . . . subscribed the
sum of £1000, and . . . the worthy members £500 each, the Gentlemen Feoffees,
fl itli that generosity which will over rebound to their honour, £500 ; with many
more considerable sums by the respectable magistracy, gentlemen and others,
amounting to the sum of £3000" (Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mirairy,
26th February 1790). Other instances might be cited. "Ashford (Kent)
lias been paved, substantially and satisfactorily, at not more than double the
expense of what an Act of Parliament for this purpose usually costs. The
inhabitants, fortunately, were unanimous; and the sum necessary for the
work, amounting to £300, was obtained, partly from the highway cess, and
partly raised by subscription. . . . The cess for the highways has never been
higher than nineponce in the pound : it is now sixpence ; and the debt incurred
in making the road has been paid off within £170" (Tin StaU of the Poor, by
SirF. M. Eden, L797, voL ii. p. 278).
4 MS, Minutes, Town Counoil, Leicester, 16th January Im'l'.
THE PAVEMENT OF MANCHESTER 303
Local Act was therefore abandoned. But unfortunately neither
the Municipal Corporation nor the wealthy inhabitants — not
even the ground landlords of the new building estates, which
were becoming rapidly covered with rows of workmen's cottages
— actually carried out any paving works ; and the streets of
this quickly developing manufacturing town remained in a
terrible condition. In 1822, the parish of St. Mary, in the old
part of the borough, found itself indicted at the Assizes, for
neglect to maintain in good repair part of the pavement of its
public highways. The Vestry, after seeking to find some other
way out, decided that it was best not to make any defence, but
immediately to put the streets in repair, at the expense of a rate.
Similar action was taken in 1832 in the adjoining parish of St.
Margaret, where the Surveyors of the Highways were directed
to put the pavements in repair, by employing the necessary
labourers out of the " composition rates," but lest their zeal
should land the ratepayers in too much expense, they were
reminded that " no street [is to] be repaired or repaved without
the knowledge and sanction of the Vestry." x The opposition
to the paving rate did not always come from the mob of smaller
ratepayers, who crowded into the churches at Manchester, 2 Leeds
or Leicester when a Vestry meeting took place. At Kingston-
on-Thames, we read in 1770, " the tradesmen are stirring Heaven
and earth to have their town new paved . . . but met with so
1 MS. Vestry Minutes, St. Mary's, Leicester, 17th April 1822 ; ibid. St.
Margaret's, Leicester, 2nd July and 13th August 1832.
2 We know little of the history of paving at Manchester. As already stated,
Improvement Commissioners were appointed, jointly with Salford, as early as
1765, but this Local Act remained, as we have already mentioned, for some
unknown reason, a dead letter, and absolutely nothing seems to have been
done until, as we have described elsewhere, the passing of a new Local Act
in 1792, and the extra-legal separation of the Commissioners for the two towns
sometime between 1792 and 1797, when the existing minutes for the Manchester
body begin. Their first attention was paid to watching and lighting, but they
presently began to deal with the pavement, using their powers of removing
obstructions to get rid of the posts which divided the footway from the road.
But though the Commissioners could put down nuisances, remove encroach-
ments, and prohibit obstructions, they had, at first, no power to pave or compel
the householders to pave. The repair of the roadways rested with the Sur-
veyors of Highways of the township, subject to the liability of the whole
extensive parish to be indicted. An influential committee, which reported in
1808, accordingly recommended the obtaining of further powers, the union of
the office of Surveyor of Highways with that of the Commissioners, and the
enactment of regulations as to the width and paving of new streets. This,
however, as we have already described, led to violent opposition, and the
project had to be abandoned.
3o 4 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
much opposition from the gentry that the session of Parliament
is over, and nothing is done." x At Greenwich, on the other
hand, where the example of the new pavement of Westminster
had its influence, it was " the gentry " who wanted " to new pave
the town with regular shaped stones like the streets in London,"
but who, we read, were " violently opposed by the townsmen or
tradesmen." 2
It is only in two or three of the larger provincial towns that
we have anything like a continuous record of the struggle between
the Municipal Corporation, the Parish Vestry and the frontagers
as to the fulfilment of the obligation and the provision of the
cost of paving the town. Thus, at Liverpool, when in 1560 a
vigorous effort was made to mend the streets, we are told that
the Mayor " in his own proper person " laboured with the stones. 3
The Liverpool Corporation came to own a large part of the town,
and it was commonly taken for granted that whatever works of
paving were wanted should be executed at its expense. Little
attention was, however, paid to this requirement during the
eighteenth century. The footways were first complained of.
" The streets," it was said in 1797, " are in general well, but not
pleasantly paved, the footpaths, called here parapets, are dis-
agreeable and offensive ; they are all laid with small sharp
pebbles that render walking in the town very disagreeable,
particularly to ladies. There is not one street in the town that
is regularly flagged." 4 When the two rival water companies
began, towards the end of the century, to lay their pipes all over
1 Middlesex Journal, 22nd-24th May 1770.
- Ibid.
3 Selections from the Municipal Archives and Records from the 12th to the
17th century, by (Sir) J. A. Picton, 1883, p. 92.
4 A General and Descriptive History of the Ancient and Present State of t/<<
Town of Liverpool, 1797, p. 21'.i, partly quoted in Memorials of Liverpool, by
(Sir) J. A. Picton, vol. i. The writer (■'■mimics as follows: "To avoid the
sharpness and inconvenience of the pavement, that foot passenger for the
most part walks on the curb, to which he is still further induced, as thereby
be avoids the danger which might otherwise arise t<» him by reason of the
projecting cellars. This comfortable relief to the feet of the passenger is,
however, in time rendered less pleasing, by frequent use the friction is thereby
so great as to wear them into deep cavities which in rainy weather become
full of holes, at this season and during the greater part of the winter the foot-
paths are generally dirty, the pebbles gathering mud in their interstices, and
as i he custom is not general of daily sweeping before the houses, it soon becomes
a clammy dirt, which adheres to the feet of the passenger" (.1 General and
Descriptive History of the Ancient and Present State of tin Town of Liverpool,
1 TUT, p. L'T.'!. partly given in Picton, i. pp. 255-256).
THE PAVEMENTS OF THE PROVINCIAL TOWNS 305
the city, the pavement became everywhere intolerable. In
1799 the Corporation promoted a Bill to authorise extensive
paving works, and the levy of a rate for the purpose. The
Parish Vestry immediately opposed this Bill, on behalf of the
inhabitants, declaring that " the parishioners are not bound by
law, or under any obligation to pave or keep in repair the streets,
lanes and public passages within the said town," and that this
obligation legally devolved upon the Municipal Corporation.
The latter body, however, persisted in its purpose, and drafted
a new Bill, the contents of which were kept " a profound secret."
On its introduction to Parliament in the session of 1801, it was
found to contain clauses enabling the Corporation to carry on
extensive paving and repairing operations, at the cost, so far as
concerned the carriage-way, of a new rate, and so far as concerned
the " parapets," or footways, at the expense of the frontagers.
These proposals met with much opposition. " According to this
clause," indignantly writes a local pamphleteer, " it should be
actually supposed that the inhabitant adjoining to such footpath
had the sole benefit of this improvement." x Meanwhile, the
issue between the Corporation and the Parish Vestry was taken
to Quarter Sessions, where it was decided, in August 1802, that
the Corporation was, by prescription, bound to maintain and
keep in repair the " ancient " streets of the town, but no others.
The Parish Committee thereupon promptly got six of its members
appointed as Surveyors of Highways, and took steps to restore
the pavement of the other streets, which had got into a " danger-
ous and ruinous state . . . not by time or the want of repair,
but by the laying down of waterpipes and the injudicious and
imperfect manner of replacing the pavements by one or both of
the companies of [waterworks] proprietors." This was to be
effected at " the cost of a moderate rate to be applied to the repair
of the streets," though it was hoped that some contribution
might be got from the water companies. 2 The division of liability
between the corporation and the parish, the absence of adequate
control over the destructive operations of the water companies,
and the lack of power to levy a special paving rate, seem to
1 Observations on a Bill introduced . . . by the Corporation of Liverpool for
. . . enlarging the powers of . . . the Liverpool Improvement Act (2G George III.).
1S02, p. 18.
2 MS. Vestry Minutes, Liverpool, 1st February 1799 and 12th April 1803.
X
306 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
have resulted in Liverpool being, in 1818, " one of the worst
paved towns in the Kingdom." ;( The carriage-ways," we are
told, " were pitched, with rough boulders. Many of the narrow
streets had no footways, and were paved in the old continental
fashion " (once universal in England, as we have seen), " with a
channel along the middle. Where footways existed, they were
paved with small angular pebbles, to which the natives had
become hardened but which on strangers produced the most
uncomfortable effect. A few cases in which flags had been laid
down on the footways were exhibited to strangers as a curiosity.
The Commissioners of the Highways at last took heart of grace
and began to flag the footways and macadamize some of the
principal streets. ... A few years sufficed to render the town
second to none in this department." x
At Bristol the story of the pavement is an even more com-
plicated entanglement of personal obligation and public impost.
How the ancient pavement in some of the streets had originally
been formed, which Defoe at the opening of the eighteenth
century found worn quite smooth and slippery, 2 we do not know.
We read of a temporary Act of 1487, compelling the frontagers
to put " the decayed broken, hollowed and pitted pavement "
into repair ; and also of the permanent toll granted to the
Municipal Corporation by its charters for the pavements of the
town, as well as for its walls. The obligation of the frontager to
keep the pavement in repair " unto the middle of the street "
was definitely ena,cted in 1700, 3 but, as we gather, very imper-
fectly enforced. In 1748 the frontagers were let off some of
their burden. Some of the streets — we suspect very few — were
more than thirty feet wide ; and in these it was provided that
the duty of repairing the pavement should be shared between
the frontagers and the parishes, the borough justices in Quarter
Sessions settling how far in each case the frontagers' obligation
1 Memorials of Liverpool, by (Sir) J. A. Picton, 1875, vol. i. pp. 350-351.
2 "They draw all their heavy goods here on sleds or sledges whieh they
call geehoes, without wheels. This kills a multitude of horses, and the pave-
ment is worn so smooth by them that in wet weather the streets are very
Blippery and in frosty weather, 'tis dangerous walking" (.4 Tour through the
whole Island of Great Britain, by Daniel Defoe, vol. ii. p. 314 of 1748 edition).
A diarist noted in the middle of the century, of the streets of Bristol, "that
they there draw all their goods on sledges " (Piis-iatjcs {nun tin Diaries of Philip
Lybbe Powys, L899, p. 49).
3 11 & 12 William III. c. 23.
THE PAVEMENTS OF THE PROVINCIAL TOWNS 307
was to extend. 1 This new division of responsibility, added to
the already existing divisions between the frontagers, could not
possibly produce a satisfactory pavement, and we are therefore
not surprised to find, in 1766, the Act of 1748 simply repealed ;
and the whole obligation thrown once more on the frontagers.
They are, however, now put under the direction of the Surveyors
of Highways of the respective parishes, and it is enacted that
" if any pavior, pitcher or other person . . . shall pave or pitch
... in an uneven, irregular or unworkmanlike manner, or use
any bad or improper materials," or otherwise act "contrary to the
order and direction of such surveyors," he is to be liable to a fine
of twenty shillings. 2 The pavement, it is hardly necessary to say,
remained in a very bad state. 3 The advent of an energetic mayor
in 1786, and the enactment of further powers for the suppres-
sion of nuisances in 1788, 4 seem to have wrought some temporary
improvement, in the course of which separate footways appear to
have been constructed. In 1794 we even read that " the streets
are well paved with flat stones for foot passengers and smooth
crossways from street to street executed very neatly." 5 But
this improvement did not meet the growing requirements of the
town. The Municipal Corporation was not disposed to incur any
expenditure from its corporate funds, and in 1806 promoted a
Bill to establish a separate body of Commissioners, elected by
the different parishes and charged with repaving the whole city,
and authorised to levy a rate for the purpose. As at Liverpool,
the inhabitants protested against this transfer of the duty of
paving and repairing from individual property owners or, as
some contended, from the Municipal Corporation, to the rate-
payers at large, but at Bristol their protest was ineffectual. The
Town Council declared in reply that its Bill did but " render the
usage of this city conformable to the general law of the land, to
which it has hitherto been an exception ; that the powers which
it gives to the (Corporation) magistrates are, in all material
1 22 George III. c. 20 (Bristol Paving, etc., Act, 1748).
2 6 George III. c. 34 (Bristol Improvement Act, 1766).
3 " Viator," in Bristol Gazette, 26th October 1786, complains of " the
wretched paving of the streets," which " no man will offer to deny, the hazard
of limbs and life in riding through them is too evident. . . . But few streets
will admit of a pavement of flat stones," for foot passengers, " from their
narrowness." He promises that the new mayor intends to change all this.
4 28 George II. c. 32.
5 The New History, Survey and Description of . . . Bristol, 1794, p. 50.
308 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
instances, the same as those exercised by the County magistrates,
and that the mode of electing Commissioners ... is the same
as is directed for the election of Surveyors of Highways under the
General Highway Act." x The Bill passed into law, 2 and the
new Bristol Commissioners went vigorously to work, without
stinting the cost. They sent their clerk to London and Bath to
find out how the paving was done in those places ; they engaged
a professional surveyor at a salary, and even imported an ex-
perienced Londoner for the post, against the importunities of
Bristol freemen and other local residents ; and they entered into
regular contracts for repairing the pavement of the whole City.
But whilst, on the one hand, their plans included, from the out-
set, a universal renovation of the pavement from end to end,
on the other, we see them summoning before them, street by
street, the owners and occupiers of the houses in them, " to
compound for the paving thereof agreeable to the directions
contained in the 34th section." 3 Under this vigorous administra-
tion, the pavements were, in the course of the next few years,
got into decent order. We hear no more complaints of their
condition, though the inhabitants sometimes resented the Com-
missioners' rates. When, in 1830, the Town Dues levied by the
Corporation on ships and wares became the subject of criticism,
and the whole position of that body was the subject of Radical
animadversion, " several of the merchants and citizens " drew
the attention of the Commissioners to the fact that these Town
Dues had been granted by charter, not for the general corporate
income, but " in aid of the repairing and amending as well the
walls of the Key (quay) as of other walls and pavements of the
town of Bristol," and that such Town Dues were at that date
yielding a large income which might properly be applied in relief
of t lie heavy paving rate. The Commissioners were not unwilling
to take the same view, and addressed a friendly memorial on the
-ubject to the Town Council, 4 by whom the matter was shelved.
The question of whether the Municipal Corporation was legally
liable, in respect of its charter and its continued exaction of
1 MS. Minutes. Town Cnun.il, Bristol, 30th April 1806.
-' 16 George III. c. 28.
3 MS. Minnies, Improvement Commissioners, Bristol, LOth, 17th and 24tli
• Inn... sili and 29th July, 5th and 2(>th August, 2nd and 2:>rd September, 7th
and llih October, 4th November 1806.
1 MS. Minutes, Town Council, Bristol, !»th dune 1830.
THE PAVEMENTS OF THE PROVINCIAL TOWNS 309
Town Dues, to maintain in repair the pavements of all the ancient
streets seems to have never been formally decided. 1
The foregoing instances will suffice to give the student some
notion of the variety, complexity and development of the arrange-
ments made for the paving of the streets of provincial cities and
boroughs. Right down to the Public Health Act of 1848 there
was no general statute requiring the construction of pavements
in English towns. Each town, and sometimes each parish or
township within a borough, was, in this respect, a law unto
itself. The surface of the streets might be left to be mended by
' the Surveyor of Highways out of Statute Labour, Team Duty and
the limited Highway Rate ; they might be provided with a rude
pavement by voluntary subscriptions, with or without a contri-
bution from the Municipal Corporation ; 2 a Local Act might be
obtained to compel frontagers to pave or repair the pavement ;
finally, Parliament, at the request of the inhabitants, might set
up a body of Improvement Commissioners, empowered to lay
down new pavement, or repair old, at the expense of a general
rate. By 1835, as we have described, all but four of the boroughs
having more than 11,000 inhabitants had statutory paving
authorities of the latter sort. The Commissioners sometimes
1 The example of Bristol in the matter of paving seems, at the opening of
the eighteenth century, to have greatly influenced the neighbouring town of
Bath, of which, as the Municipal Corporation petitions in 1707, " the streets
and lanes " had " become so ruinous by the great concourse of people, and
horses and carriages," as to be very inconvenient, both to the inhabitants and
to the rapidly increasing number of visitors to this fashionable resort (House
of Commons Journals, 20th November 1707). An Act was thereupon passed
(0 Anne, c. — ) greatly increasing the powers of the Mayor and Aldermen, and
compelling the frontagers to pave and repair. Under a subsequent Act (7
George I. c. 19) a body of Commissioners was appointed, with power to rate
and pave. At the opening of the nineteenth century it was Bath which in-
fluenced Bristol. In 1806 the new Bristol Commissioners sent their clerk to
Bath to learn how their jmving work was done. He found them using the soft
local oolitic stone for the carriage-ways, set side by side in squared blocks
8 inches deep, 12 inches long and 4 inches broad, forming a continuous pave-
ment which needed repairing every other year. The footways were paved
with Pennant flagstones. The whole work was done under a five years'
contract, subject to specification and approval by a salaried surveyor (MS.
Minutes, Improvement Commissioners, Bath, 24th June 1806).
2 It was not unusual for the Municipal Corporation to make a voluntary
contribution out of its corporate funds to particular works of paving executed
either by the parish or the local Commissioners, or by individual inhabitants.
Thus the Nottingham Town Council in 1803 voted £100 towards the cost of
certain pavement near " the White Lion " (MS. Minutes, Town Council, Notting-
ham, 14th September 1803).
310 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
attempted to carry out their paving works by the direct employ-
ment of labour, either hired in the open market or borrowed from
the workhouse. 1 Sometimes, as at Exeter as late as 1834, they
engaged a surveyor, but allowed him also to undertake the work
he surveyed, executing it for a quoted price, and making what-
ever profit he could, under no other superintendence than his
own. 2 Sometimes, again, we find them buying their own stone,
engaging their own surveyor at a fixed salary, and putting the
work out to contract under his supervision — a method which, as
in the City of London and in Bristol, seems, at the beginning of
the nineteenth century, in the then state of administrative
machinery, to have proved the most successful of all. 3
So little record is made of the day by day changes in the
common accessories of life that we do not find it easy to visualise
the pavements of the various provincial towns, and their gradual
transformation, during the eighteenth century and the first
thirty years of the nineteenth. In many of the smaller places
the streets evidently remained, from the beginning to the end of
the period, in the same intolerable condition. This by no means
implies an absence of stone pavements. " The art of sticking
the streets with the points of the stones upwards," says a diarist
1 Thus, in 1824, we see the Plymouth Commissioners asking the Incorporated
Guardians of the Poor whether they would supply able-hodied paupers to
break stones for repairing the streets at the same rate as was being paid by the
neighbouring Turnpike Trusts for this work. This was actually done five years
later (MS. Minutes, Improvement Commissioners, Plymouth, 14th September
1824, 10th November 1829). At Leicester in 1832, on the other hand, the
Vestry directed the Surveyor of Highways to engage his own labourers for
paving (MS. Vestry Minutes, St. Margaret's, Leicester, 2nd July 1832).
2 Exeter newspaper, 17th July 1834.
3 To this arrangement, after various unsuccessful experiments, the Plymouth
Commissioners came in 1828, on the " report of a committee, which was con-
vinced from the information it has collected from various quarters as to the
comparative advantage of having the town paved by the contract with the
present mode, that the advantages are decided by and greatly in favor of
paving and repaving the pavement by contract " (MS. Minutes, Plymouth Im-
provement Commissioners, 26th February 1828). So also did the Brighton
( lommissioners, who found in 1825 that " under the present system of executing
works there is no possibility of checking the charges made by the persons
employed, neither have the Commissioners any means of knowing whether the
works charged for have been actually executed." They accordingly got rid of
their existing inferior officer, appointed a surveyor at a salary of £200 a
year, and decided to put all paving work out to contract (MS. Minutes, Im-
provement Commissioners. Brighton, 2nd and 6th September 1825). The
Paving Committee for the Vestry of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields advertise, in
1806, for tenders for ;i three years' contract for paving and repairing pavement
{Morning Advertiser, L'lth April lsoti).
THE PAVEMENTS OF THE PROVINCIAL TOWNS 31 1
of 1760, " greatly flourishes in every town almost." * " Our
main streets," writes a Kendal historian of the period between
1763 and 1826, " were paved with large road cobbles, so very
slippery that the inhabitants acquired a catch in their walk as if
on ice. . . . The farmers positively refused to take their horses
over the small sharp stones lest they might be lamed beyond
recovery." 2 " During the whole of the time that Lancaster was
in a state of prosperity " (notably during the first quarter of the
nineteenth century), we are told that " no care appears to have
been taken of the streets which were in a deplorable state. . . .
They were roughly paved, with very deep channels running down
the middle of each street to carry off the rainfall." 3 Even in so
large a town as Birmingham the " petrified kidneys " remained
the only paving, of foot- and carriage-ways alike, as late as 1830. 4
" The streets are pav'd, 'tis true, but all the stones
Are set the wrong way up, in shapes of cones,
And strangers limp along the best pav'd street,
As if parch'd peas were strew'd beneath their feet,
Whilst custom makes the natives scarcely feel
Sharp-pointed pebbles press the toe or heel." 5
These primitive pavements were, in fact, nothing more than
an extension to the whole surface of the highway of the " cawsey,"
provided originally for the packhorses ; with " an open, rather
deep gutter in the centre of the street for the reception of all the
filth imaginable." 6 In the principal streets of such important
centres of business or pleasure as Bristol and Bath, this mediaeval
1 Passages from the Diaries of Philip Lybbe Powys, 1899, p. 61. The town
immediately referred to was Arundel (Sussex).
2 Kirbie Kendall : fragments . . . relating to its ancient streets and yards,
by John F. Curwen, 1900, p. 15.
3 Lancaster Records, or Leaves from Local History, 1S01-1S50, 1S69, p. vi.
4 Going to Markets and Grammar Schools, by Geo. Griffith, 1870, p. 13.
5 Birmingham : a Poem, by J. Bisset, 1800 ; A Century of Birmingham Life,
by J. A. Langford, 1868, vol. ii. pp. 119-122.
6 Records of ye Antient Borough of South Molton in ye County of Devon, by
John Cock, 1893, p. 65. The pavement of rounded cobble-stones, sometimes
with the kennel in the middle, still characterises many North Country villages
— we may instance Knutsf ord in Cheshire and Reeth in Yorkshire — con-
tributing by its noisy clatter, uneasy jolting, and arid squalor to their inferiority
in charm and comfort to those of the South of England. Similarly, the reten-
tion by Manchester of stone " setts " — an improvement on the cobbles in
cleanliness though scarcely in noiselessness — instead of adopting, like London
and South Country towns, the relatively quiet macadamised surface, con-
tributed not a little to drive its wealthier residents to live outside its boundaries
— to the manifold loss of the city, in municipal administration and much eh?.
/
3 i2 Till: IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
type of pavement was, towards the end of the eighteenth or in
the opening years of the nineteenth century, slowly exchanged
for the type brought into vogue by the Westminster Paying Com-
missioners — a level or slightly concave carriage-way, laid with
squared blocks of hard stone set closely side by side, with lateral
gutters and elevated footways, marked oil by curb stones. 1 This
access of care in shaping and laying the paving stones was, how-
ever, even in the case of the Westminster Paving Commissioners
and the most efficient provincial authorities, largely rendered
nugatory by the fact, which we find first commented on in 1824,
that " in most of our streets the pavement lies on a soft and
yielding bed, . . . earth reducible to a semi-liquid mass by every
shower of rain." It was an engineering novelty, reserved for
such road constructors as Telford, to recommend " that a sub-
stratum be formed of more unyielding materials," 2 without
which, as we now know, the best laid pavements, either for
carriages or pedestrians, wear quickly uneven, and into holes.
This tendency to pave the carriage-way with " setts " of squared
granite was interrupted by the advent of Macadam, and by the
preference, especially of London and other towns of the south
and west of England, for the relatively noiseless surface which he
constructed for them.
How soon the :< flagged footpaths " which, early in the
eighteenth century, had excited the. admiration of foreign
visitors to the Metropolis, were introduced into provincial towns,
we are unable to discover. We suspect that only in very few
cases outside the Metropolis did there exist, at the end of the
eighteenth century, any continuous lines of footway paved with
broad flagstones ; and such as then existed had only lately been
constructed. Among these exceptions were Bristol and Bath.
It was, however, already noted, in 1799-1800, as somewhat
disgraceful to Liverpool and Birmingham that they should be
without flagged footways, and it seems that this improvement
was introduced, during the first twenty years of the nineteenth
1 Such a pavement existed, we gather, at the very beginning of the nine-
trcnt h century at Plymouth Duck. qotk Devonport, wheA we read " the si reels
. . . are paved with a species of marble which is very common in the quart
"I Mounl Wise and Stonehouse. In the mure public streets where there is
any descent the Stones are extremely beautiful after heavy rains, with a v.n
of veins" {Thi Plymouth Dock Guide, about 1800).
- A Pa/",- read Injur/ tin Institution of Civil Engineers •>" tin Construction
of Carriage-W ay Pavements, by Bryan Donkin, 1824.
THE PAVEMENTS OF THE PROVINCIAL TOWNS 313
century, by various large towns. But the great period for its
adoption was the decade between 1820 and 1830 when such
records as we have gathered show dozens of towns, great and
small, to have abandoned their pebbled ways. It was during
these years that the Liverpool authorities, we are told, " took
heart of grace and began to flag the footways and macadamise
some of the principal streets. Church Street was the first to
have the benefit of this improvement. A few years sufficed to
render the town second to none in this department.",, 1 At
Preston, the Improvement Commissioners began to flag the foot-
ways in 1821. 2 The ancient city of York was engaged in the
same work in 1829, still charging householders half the cost, as a
special luxury, 3 whereas the far less important borough of
Bewdley is reported to have completed its flagging by 1830. 4
Birmingham seems during the same decade to have begun " the
gradual substitution of stone-flagging for the causeways, instead
of the sharp-pointed pebbles so long the opprobrium of the place." 5
In the south of England, we learn that at Penzance " in 1825
nearly all the footpaths of the streets were pitchpaved ; the
flat paving was begun about 1826 or 1827." 6 At Devizes in
1825 " hardly a square yard of flagging was to be seen from
one end ... to the other ; the occasional occurrence of posts
and pavements before some solitary door rather tending to trip
up the public, and render the long intervals of sharp pebbles
appear all the more toilsome." Within a few years from that
date, a new body of Improvement Commissioners had flagged
the town. 7 At the little town of South Molton in Devonshire,
" up to 1825 the principal streets appear to have been pitched
with large stones," and the " first flagging on the footpaths "
was put down in that year. 8 Even in the little town of Minchin-
hampton the Vestry called for tenders in 1824 as to " what rate
1 Memorials of Liverpool, by (Sir) J. A. Picton, 1875, vol. i. pp. 350-351.
2 History of Preston, by P. A. Whittle, 1837, vol. ii. p. 109.
3 MS. Minutes, Improvement Commissioners, York, 2nd November 1829.
4 Going to Markets and Grammar Schools, by George Griffith, 1870, p. 13.
5 The Picture of Birmingham, by James Drake, 1825, p. 30.
6 Half a Century of Penzance, 1825-1875, by J. S. Courtney, 1878, p. 43.
7 Chronicles of the Devizes, by James Waylen, 1839, p. 167.
8 Records of ye Antient Borough of South Molton in ye County of Devon, by
John Cock, 1893, p. 65. At Plymouth, in 1829, granite curb was laid down
free, wherever the frontager would consent to repave the footway " with the
best large slate stones (sawn, and not hewn with chisel) from Cann Quarry "
(MS. Minutes, Improvement Commissioners, Plymouth, 8th December 1829),
314 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
per yard the footpaths and the water course of the town can be
pitched and paved," and appointed a committee to get the work
done. 1 By 1835, though some places of importance still lagged
behind, we infer that nagged footways had become the rule
instead of the exception in the principal streets of nearly all the
larger towns. 2
All this praiseworthy enterprise in respect of street pavement
had, from a modern standpoint, one disastrous limitation.
' The pavement," it was observed in 1842, was " regarded as
requisite solely for cart or carriage conveyance and not as a
means of cleanliness." 3 The one and only thought of those who
paved the town was, in fact, in 1830 as in 1762 and 1662, the
safe, speedy and pleasant transit of vehicles and pedestrians —
what John Spranger himself had described as " making the
passage through our streets and lanes safe, easy and commodi-
ous." 4 It was to secure this end that obstructions had been
prohibited, kennels had been filled in, side gutters had been con-
structed, footways had been flagged, and carriage-ways had been
levelled, drained and provided with a hard surface. These
paving improvements had been effected primarily in "the
principal streets in which the carriage traffic is considerable," to
which, in many towns, they were, in 1835, still confined. 5 They
had been extended from thoroughfare to thoroughfare, not
according to its population but according to the amount and
importance of the traffic, poor and unfrequented localities being
usually excluded from the advantages, and sometimes exempted
from the cost, of the new pavement. It never occurred to the
most reforming body of Improvement Commissioners in a
crowded town that their task was incomplete so long as any
1 MS. Vestry Minutes, Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire, 8th December
1824.
2 In 1841, Sir Robert Peel alluded to " the man who found a piece <>f
smooth pavement in some country town (Tamworth it might be), and walked
to and fro for the purpose of enjoying the pleasure of contrast." !Sir K. Peel
to J. \V. (Yoke,, sili November L841, The Croker Papers, by L J. Jennings, L884,
vol. ii. p. 410.
3 General Report of the Poor Law Commissioners on the Sanitary Condition
of the Labouring Population of (,'retil Britain, 1S42, p. ">!>.
4 A Proposal or Plan for an Act . . . for the better paving, lighting and
cleansing the streets . . . of Westminster . . . Marylebone, </<■.. by John
Spranger, 1 764, preface.
6 General Report of tin' Poor Lair Commissioners on the Sanitary Condition
of the Lab uring Population of Great Britain, 1842, p. 59.
THE PAVEMENTS OF THE PROVINCIAL TOWNS 315
square yard of surface lying between human habitations remained
unprovided with an artificial covering, impervious to wet, and
easily cleaned of filth. Hence, even in the best regulated towns,
whole streets — sometimes whole districts — remained unpaved,
whilst the thousands of densely populated courts and alleys, not
to mention the backyards, were usually entirely outside the
jurisdiction of any paving authority. These unpaved areas, left
in a barbarous state of holes and heaps, became not only the
receptacles for stagnant water, but also the dumping grounds of
every kind of impurity, which spread, in poisonous dust or liquid
filth, throughout the whole district. Thus it came about, in
spite of all the work of the paving authorities, that when in
1831 the Asiatic cholera reached England, it found actually a
larger superficial area of unpaved surface in the midst of crowded
human habitations than had existed at any previous period. 1
Nor was this immediately, or even promptly, remedied. It was
not until the cholera had, in 1831-1833, swept away thousands of
lives, and in 1848 and 1854 thousands more, that town paving
ceased to be regarded merely as a means of easy transit, and the
necessity, on grounds of public health, of imperviously covering
town surfaces became an axiom of municipal administration.
1 As a specimen of the unpaved state of the manufacturing towns of Lanca-
shire and Yorkshire we may append the following descriptions of Wigan,
Manchester and Leeds in 1839. " Many of the streets are unpaved, and almost
covered with stagnant water, which lodges in numerous large holes which exist
upon their surface, and into which the inhabitants throw all kinds of rejected
animal and vegetable matters, which there undergo decay and emit the most
poisonous emanations. These matters are often allowed ... to accumulate
to an immense extent, and thus become prolific sources of malaria, rendering
the atmosphere an active poison. . . . The waste land ... is one complete
pool of stagnant water, mixed with various descriptions of putrifying animal
and vegetable matters " {General Report of the Poor Law Commissioners on the
Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, 1842, p. 19).
In Manchester, out " of G87 streets inspected by a voluntary association (in
1832) 248 were reported as undrained. Many . . . are so deep in mire or so
full of hollows and heaps of refuse that the vehicle . . . cannot be driven
along them. . . . Whole streets in these quarters are unpaved and . . . worn
into deep ruts and holes, in which water constantly stagnates, and are so
covered with refuse and excrementitious matter as to be almost impassable
from depth of mud and intolerable from stench. In the narrow lanes, confined
courts and alleys leading from these similar nuisances exist, if possible to a
still greater extent " (ibid. p. 38). Leeds was in an equally bad condition.
" Of the 586 streets of Leeds, G8 only are paved by the . . . local authorities,
the remainder are either j^aved by owners, or are partly paved, or are totally
unpaved, with the surfaces broken in every direction, and ashes and filth of
every description accumulated upon many of them " (ibid. p. 40).
3 i6 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
Street Cleansing
It would, however, be unfair not to describe, in this connec-
tion, a second service undertaken by practically all the bodies of
Improvement Commissioners, namely, the organised cleansing of
the principal thoroughfares from the mud and filth of all kinds by
which they were constantly becoming encumbered. So far, we
have been able to ascertain, the systematic cleansing of the
streets always succeeded and never preceded their paving. In
mediaeval times both services were initiated or enforced by the
same authority, using the same customary or statutory sanctions,
and practically the same administrative devices. Throughout
the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the two services
continued closely intertwined. The same series of Local Acts
which established new bodies of Improvement Commissioners
with power to pave or to enforce the maintenance of paving,
gave these also the power to cleanse, and to enforce cleansing.
Moreover, both in the law and in the administration of these
common powers, we see the same transition from the enforce-
ment on each householder of an ancient customary obligation,
to the provision of an organised department of municipal enter-
prise, maintained out of the proceeds of a common rate. In its
main lines the story of Street Cleansing from 1700 to 1835 is a
mere duplication of that of Street Paving. But it has certain
distinctive features of its own which a brief survey will bring to
light.
Municipal enterprise in street cleansing x is, even more than
that of street paving, a development from the mediaeval con-
ception of a common nuisance. Failure to fulfil the twin obliga-
tion of paving in front of a town tenement, and keeping this
1 We know of no history of town cleansing in this country. The Cleansing
of Cities and Tenons, by A. May, 1911, 319 pp., seems to be almost the only
general work upon the subject outside the essentially modern problem of
sewage treat it lent. How complicated is now the organisation of street cleansing
and the disposal of urban refuse may be seen in the American works. Strut
Cleansing, by Col. Waring ; Modem Methods of Street Cleaning, by G. A. Soper,
1909, 201 pp.; and the -New York Public Library Bibliography of City Wash i
and Strut Hygiene, 1912, ">."> pp. In the period with which we deal the service
was viewed as a simple one. Beyond contemporary pamphlets and newspapers,
the minutes of local authorities, and the Local Acts, we have found most
information in the General Report of the Poor Law Commissioners on the Sanitary
Condition of the Labouring Population of Ureal Britain, 1842. But see also
Hi, Sanitary Evolution of London, by I!. Jephson, 1907, 440 pp., and The
Health Agitation, 1833 1848, by .Miss B, L. Hutchins, 1909, 160 pp.
STREET CLEANSING 317
pavement clean, could be prosecuted as a passive nuisance, that
is, as a neglect to do what the common good required. But the
householders adjoining a filthy street, unlike those abutting on a
ruinous pavement, were presumably guilty of an active as well
as of a passive nuisance. A worn or broken pavement was in the
main caused by the innocent activity of the whole body of
citizens and strangers who used the thoroughfare : the heaps of
soil, dung, dirt, ashes, garbage, etc., which disgraced the un-
cleansed street were almost certainly due to the direct and
intentional action of the inhabitants of the particular street, if
not of some particular tenement. If streets were not to become
impassable, some way of dealing with these active nuisances had
to be found. The first move was to treat the heaps as ordinary
obstructions of the King's Highway, and to prohibit all citizens
from casting, laying or leaving dirt, refuse or ashes on the surface
of the street, exactly as they were forbidden to stand their carts
or trade implements, or to display their goods, to the detriment
of the free passage. With this elaborate series of prohibitions
we shall deal in another volume, concerned with the regulation
of personal conduct and the Suppression of Nuisances. The
massing of town population led, however, to one all-important
exception to this prohibitory code. In the course of each day
every household accumulated a certain quantity of filth and
refuse which had, somehow or other, to be disposed of. So
long as there existed, within easy reach of every family, gome
waste place or running river, some backyard or vault, where this
refuse might be deposited, it was open to the local authority
rigorously to enforce its prohibition of deposit in the street. The
enlargement of the town area, the filling up of all available space
by tenements, the diversion of watercourses from the streets,
the culverting or arching over of their channels, the extinction
of backyards and gardens, the growing disproportion between
the number of privies, ashpits and middens on the one hand and
that of the population on the other — all these common circum-
stances of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English town
rendered the simple expedient of prohibition a mere futility.
It became inevitable that the household refuse should sooner or
later be placed in the street. Spasmodically, when there was a
special alarm of plague, the householder was even admonished
and encouraged to oust the filth from his house. It is therefore
318 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
not surprising to find the " great heaps and quantities of rubbish,
dirt and other filth " x lying about the streets becoming noted as
a characteristic feature of every large town of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. The same problem was arising as to
the disposal of the mud and dust created or brought into the
street by the multitudinous traffic. Each householder might
conscientiously sweep in front of his tenement, but what was to
happen to his sweepings ? So long as there existed a running
stream of water in the street, or so long as the deposits in the
kennel were no more than could be washed away by every shower
of rain, the problem hardly presented itself. But with the
growth of population and the accumulation of other kinds of
filth, the street sweepings of the householder were merely added
to the larger heaps of household refuse. Confronted by these
heaps, steadily growing in size and number, for which prohibition
and injunction had proved vain, one authority after another
adopted the device, not merely, as in paving, of enforcing by
statute the householder's customary obligation, but of com-
bining it in intimate partnership with an incipient form of
municipal enterprise.
The administration of the City of London in the latter half
of the seventeenth century affords the clearest example of this
combination of administrative devices. Each householder was
under an ancient obligation to cleanse the pavement in front of
his tenement, but (in a city in which, by exception, separate
footways for pedestrians had long existed) this obligation was,
at any rate in the seventeenth century, restricted in practice to
keeping clean the part reserved for foot passengers, by posts or
flagstones. Certain places, " as far as may be, out of the City
and common passages," 2 were set apart as " laystalls," where
any one might deposit dirt and refuse of any kind. The indis-
criminate casting of filth or ashes into the streets was, like all
other hindrances to free passage, peremptorily forbidden ; but
the householder was permitted, and even enjoined to rid his
house of its filth, " either by setting out the same overnight in
tubs, boxes, baskets, or other vessels near and contiguous to
1 The Presentment of the Grand Jury at the Old Bayley, 1084.
2 Order 8 formally com i iird and agreed to be published by the Lord Mayor and
Aldermen of the City <>f London . . . concerning tin- infection of the Plague, and
7ioiv reprinted and published by order of the House of Commons, 1G46.
STREET CLEANSING 319
their houses, or by bringing out the same within convenient
time," during the prescribed hours. 1 Each of the twenty-five
wards had its " Scavenger," an unpaid officer chosen annually at
the Ward-mote, whose duty it was to see that the law was obeyed.
The actual work of sweeping the carriage-ways and carrying away
all deposits was entrusted by the City authorities to specially
appointed " Eakers," whom we should nowadays term dust con-
tractors. In 1762 we find the Commissioners of Sewers of the
City entering into an elaborate annual contract with the Fellow-
ship of Carmen, which then exercised the monopoly of cartage
within the City, owned by Christ's Hospital. This " Fellow-
ship " undertook to send carmen with " tumbrils or carts " in
the early hours of five days, and the afternoon of Saturday, in
each week, to cleanse the streets, scour the sewers, and carry
away " all the dung, soil, filth, seacoal, ashes and other dirt, as
well from all the streets ... as from all the houses." Every
household, even the poorest and most ignorant, was to have the
advantage of this service. " The said carmen, undertakers,
their agents or servants," it is expressly provided, " shall give
notice of their being in the streets with their tumbrils or carts,
by loudly knocking a wooden clapper, especially in courts, alleys
and other back passages, upon pain to forfeit 3s. 4d. upon every
complaint duly proved." For this service the householders paid
them " the customary rates by the Scavenger's Book " ; and
those who had what we should now call " trade refuse " to dis-
pose of (such as the " innkeeper, livery stable keeper, brewer,
dyer, sugar baker, soap maker or other trader ") paid an extra
quarterly allowance fixed by " the Assessors of each ward
according to their best discretion, respect being had to the trade
or other occasions in the making of more or less dung and soil
1 An ancient order, reprinted as late as 1677, shows that, even in the City
of London, a practice prevailed during the hours of night which was the oppro-
brium of the Edinburgh of the beginning of the nineteenth as it is that of
Madrid at the beginning of the twentieth century. " No man shall cast any
urine boles or ordure boles into the streets by day or night, afore the hour
of nine in the night ; also he shall not cast it out, but bring it down, and lay
it in the channel, under the pain of 3s. 4d., and if he do cast it upon any person's
head, the party to have a law recompense if he have hurt thereby " ("The
Statutes of the Streets of this City against Nuisances," in The Laws of the
Market, printed by Andrew Clark, printer to the Honourable City of London,
1677 ; quoted in Observations on Popular Antiquities, by John Brand, vol. i.
pp. 126, 132 of edition of 1841, and in the General Report of the Poor Law Com-
missioners on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population, 1842).
320 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
by such traders." To inspect this elaborate organisation the
Commissioners of Sewers nominated two civic dignitaries as
honorary " supervisors," authorising them to appoint their own
deputies " to see the same duly executed and performed." How
long this particular agreement with the Fellowship of Carmen
may have lasted, and how efficiently it was executed, we have
not ascertained. In f684 we have the Grand Jury at the Old
Bailey complaining of the " great heaps and quantities of rubbish,
dirt and other filth lying about the streets of this City, to the
endangering of the inhabitants thereof in their healths, and
breeding of manifold diseases, it being very inconvenient to
passengers." " We therefore humbly offer and think it reason-
able," proceeds the Jury, " that the several scavengers in and
about the precincts and wards of this City be forthwith ordered
to take some speedy course for the removing and carrying away
the said soil so lying in the several streets ; and that such as
they appoint do frequently call on the several inhabitants for
the carrying away of such soil as shall be made in their several
houses, to prevent distempers that may arise by reason of the
stink thereof this hot weather, according to the duty of their
several offices ; and that such persons as are neglecting therein
be forthwith prosecuted for their several offences." l
Whatever may have been the efficiency of this organisation
in the City of London — and on this point we have practically no
evidence, and not even any complaints' to quote — we infer that
it went on, throughout the whole of the eighteenth century, and
well into the nineteenth, with but one important change in the
law and its administration, and with but few minor variations.
Instead of the Raker collecting his payment from each individual
householder, he became the paid servant or contractor of the
Commissioners of Sewers. The " customary rates by the
Scavenger's Book " were thus replaced by the even poundage
rate levied by the Commissioners for their various purposes.
By a statute of 1765, which strengthened the power of enforce-
ment, the limitation of the City householder's cleansing obliga-
tion merely to the width of the footway was implicitly con-
firmed. 2 The laystalls, for which it grew more and more difficult
to discover suitable sites, were replaced by " moveable or fixed
1 The Presentment of the Grand Jury at . . . the old Bayley, 1G84.
- (i George III. <•. 26.
THE DIRT OF WESTMINSTER 321
dust boxes, dust holes or conveyances wherein dust or other
filth may be deposited for the scavengers or rakers." 1 Those
who contracted to remove the filth and refuse were allowed
under easy conditions the temporary use of vacant sites in the
streets, as places of deposit. But the contractors had to take
away all the " ashes, dirt and slop . . . twice in every week, in
broad wheeled carts with flaps to cover them," before noon or
after 3 p.m., with the obligation to dispose of this refuse else-
where how they could. 2 At this point we leave the City of
London, which was always praised by foreign visitors for the
relative cleanliness of its crowded streets ; and we proceed to
describe the gradual introduction of some kind of cleansing
organisation into the other parts of the Metropolis.
The state even of the best thoroughfares in Westminster
during the first half of the eighteenth century is a testimony to
the low standard then existing among the wealthiest, most
luxurious and most fastidious classes with regard to their own
health and convenience in the use of the streets. Within this
area lay the palaces of the King, the mansions of the great, the
Houses of Parliament and the Courts of Justice, as well as the
daily places of resort of the officers, lawyers and literary men.
Yet we find practically no complaints from any of these govern-
ing classes about the incredible accumulations of horse dung in
the carriage-ways, the heaps of dirt by which the footways were
obstructed, the decaying animal and vegetable matter which
blocked the kennels, and the pools of stagnant filth that lay amid
the broken pavements. Mandeville was perhaps indulging in
facetious humour when he demonstrated, in 1714, that " dirty
streets are a necessary evil inseparable from the felicity of
London. . . . There are, I believe," he said, " few people in
London, of those that are at any times forced to go afoot, but
what could wish the streets of it much cleaner than generally
they are, whilst they regard nothing but their own clothes and
private conveniency. But when once they come to consider
that what offends them is the result of the plenty, great traffic
and opulency of that mighty city, if they have any interest in
its welfare, they will hardly ever wish to see the streets of it less
1 6 George III. c. 26.
2 Advertisement of Commissioners of Sewers for the City of London in The
Diary, 26th May 1790.
Y
322 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
i i i 1 1 y. For if we mind the materials of all sorts that must suj>i >ly
such an infinite number of trades and handicrafts as are always
going forward . . . the multitudes of horses and other cattle
that are always daubing the streets, the carts, coaches and more
heavy carriages that are perpetually wearing and breaking the
pavement of them, and above all the numberless swarm of people
that are constantly harassing and trampling through every part
of them — if, I say, we mind all these, we shall find that every
moment must produce new filth, and considering how distant the
great streets are from the river side, what cost and care soever
be bestowed to remove the nastiness almost as fast as it is made,
it is impossible London should be more cleanly before it is
nourishing." 1 But however we may discount as satirical
?Jandeville's defence of dirty streets, there can be no doubt of
his facts. As late as 1756, on the unimpeachable authority of
the sober John Spranger, we have it that " the rough and broken
pavements were so covered by filth as to make them scarcely
visible to the most cautious passenger by day." The " quantity
of filth in our streets," he added, is " so great that man and beast
in some places can hardly wade through it." 2
Some effort had been made after the Restoration to mitigate
this evil. Under the temporary Paving Act of 1662 a " Chief
Raker " had been appointed for the Westminster parishes, who
occupied towards the Commissioners on the one hand, and the
individual householders on the other, practically the same
position as did the Fellowship of Carmen in the City of London.
At the end of the century, as we learn incidentally from an
mteresting lawsuit recorded in the archives of the Middlesex
Quarter Sessions, 3 the business of this office was still being con-
ducted by the widow of the original holder, with a considerable
capital invested in horses, carts and laystalls. Besides this Chief
Raker, or contractor, we gather that each parish appointed one
of its inhabitants to the annual and unpaid office of Scavenger,
whose duty it was to present householders neglecting their duty
of cleansing the pavement in front of their tenements, and to
see that the Chief Raker fulfilled his contract But this Act of
'■ The. Fable of l/ie Bees, by Bernard de Mandeville, 1714, preface.
- . I Proposal or Plan for an Art of Parliament for the Better Paving, Cleansing
and Lighting, etc. . . . of Westminster, by John Spranger, 1 76 n, preface.
(iddlesex County Records, by J. Cordv Jefferson, vol. iv. pp. xxxiv,
I
THE RAKERS AND SCAVENGERS 323
1662, as we have already mentioned, was never generally en-
forced, and the " Commissioners of Scotland Yard," as they were
called, presently ceased to function, whereupon the parish organisa-
tion, at any rate in many places, promptly went to pieces.
" Many persons," we are told in 1691, "in the outparishes in
Middlesex and other parishes in the limits aforesaid, which have
been chosen to serve the office of Scavenger refuse to take the
execution of the said office upon them ; and others who have
been rated and assessed towards the cleansing and carrying away
the dirt and soil out of the streets, have refused to pay the rates
assessed upon them, there being no law in force to compel them
thereunto, so that no person can be employed to be Raker, to
carry the dirt out of the said streets, for want of some provision
for payment for doing that service : And the poorer sort of
people daily throw into the said streets all the dirt, filth and coal
ashes made in their houses : By reason thereof the said streets
are become extremely dirty and filthy, so that Their Majesties'
subjects cannot conveniently pass through the same about their
lawful occasions." x Hence, in the permanent Act of 1691,
which extended to all the places within the Bills of Mortality,
we find clauses re-enacted, specifically enforcing the obligation
of the householder, and providing for the offices of Scavenger and
Raker. In 1721, when London was in fear of the plague, the
committee appointed by the Middlesex Quarter Sessions dis-
tributed among householders printed copies of these clauses,
imposing penalties for " not . . . sweeping up the dirt, as well
as upon the Rakers and Scavengers for not taking it away, and
also for not cleaning and carrying away the filth and soil from
the several markets. Yet experience has shewed," conclude the
justices sadly, " that all these steps have not had the good effect
which might have been expected of them." 2 Householders con-
tinued to defile the streets and to neglect altogether to sweep
their pavements, whilst the Rakers not only left whole streets
unvisited, but, by their use of common carts without covers,
often made matters worse than before. This, declared Jonas
Hanway, in 1754, " is surely one of the greatest absurdities that
ever prevailed in the police of a civilised state ; for the Rakers
1 2 William and Mary, sess. 2, c. 8 (1691).
2 Report of the Committee on Nuisances, MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions,
Middlesex, 12th October 1721.
324 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
not only drop near a quarter part of their dirt, and render a
whole street, perhaps already cleansed, in many spots very
filthy, but it subjects every coach and every passenger, of what
quality whatsoever, to be overwhelmed with whole cakes of dirt
at every accidental jolt of the cart ; of which many have had a
most filthy experience." 1 In despair of getting any improve-
ment in cleanliness from the various parochial authorities, it was
proposed, in 1752, "that the cleansing of" the entire Metro-
politan area " should be put under one uniform public manage-
ment, and all the filth be carried into lighters, and conveyed by
the Thames to proper distances in the country." 2 This was,
however, far too large a piece of construction for the amateur
reformers in the House of Commons, to whom the Ministry
afforded no assistance ; and nothing more was accomplished
than the insertion of the word " cleansing " in the list of street
functions entrusted, as we have described, in 1761 to the West-
minster Paving Commissioners. These Commissioners were,
however, during the brief period of their activity, wholly absorbed
in the primary duty of equipping the Metropolis with the new
pavement to which we have already referred ; and we hear
nothing of any action by them for cleansing the streets. Within
a few years, as we have already mentioned, the various Vestries
obtained their own Local Acts, virtually excepting their several
parishes from the executive jurisdiction of the Commissioners.
It was therefore to the Vestries, and to the other bodies of
Trustees or Commissioners under Local Acts for special areas,
and to these alone, that the inhabitants of Westminster, as of the
other parts of the Metropolitan area outside the City, could,
right down to 1855, look for any cleansing of their streets.
The outlying parishes beyond the limits of the Bills of
Mortality had even less organised provision for cleansing their
streets than the City of London and the parishes of Westminster.
In the first half of the eighteenth century such incipient urban
districts as Kensington, Marylebone, and Bethnal Green had no
other organisation for the management of their streets than that
of a rural parish. Except where a road was under a Turnpike
Trust, it was left to the direction of the unpaid Surveyor of High-
1 A Letter I" Mr. John Spranger, by Jonas Eanway, 1754, p. 37.
- Observations on the Past Growth and Present State of I he City of London,
I'v ( orbyn Morris, L762, p. 24
" BELL, HORN OR CLAPPER " 325
ways, using the Statute Labour of the inhabitants. Occasionally,
as we infer, there would arise a voluntary combination to get
the household refuse removed. " Though there be no scaveng-
ing," we are told of Marylebone in 1756 (which had then about
5000 inhabitants in 577 houses), " yet the person that carries
away the ashes receives by a voluntary contribution about £50
per annum." 1 Gradually, as we have already seen, the various
districts of the Metropolis outside the City obtained Local Acts
— sometimes applying to whole parishes, sometimes only to
particular squares, or the streets on a particular landowner's
estate— giving new powers of government, either to the Vestries
or to special bodies of Trustees or Commissioners ; and in the
matter of cleansing, in particular, extending to these areas
practically the same legal machinery as that prevailing in the
City of London — expressly enforcing, on the one hand, the
obligation of the householder to cleanse the footway in front of
his tenement ; 2 and in the other, enabling the Vestry or other
body to appoint or contract with one or more "rakers or cleansers "
to sweep the carriage-ways and remove both dirt and household
refuse, by carts perambulating the streets, with " bell, horn or
clapper, or otherwise by a loud noise or cry," giving notice to
the householders " to bring forth to the doors of their respective
houses their soil, ashes, rubbish, dirt, dust and filth." 3
Under this system powerful Vestries like Marylebone managed
to clear their streets of the heaps of dung and refuse, and to
keep the footways in a tolerable state for pedestrians. But
among the couple of hundred separate authorities 4 to whom the
cleansing of the Metropolitan streets was entrusted, there existed,
it is clear, every variety of neglect and incompetence. In the
1 History of London, by W. Maitland, 175G, vol. ii. p. 1373.
2 Thus, by one of the earliest of the parochial Local Acts in the Metro-
politan area, the inhabitants of Bethnal Green were, in 1750, expressly required
to sweep and cleanse the pavement in front of their tenements every Tuesday
and Friday, between the hours of 7 and 10 in the morning or 2 and 5 in the
afternoon, under penalty of five shillings fine (24 George I. c. 26 ; Bethnal
Green Cleansing, Lighting and Watching Act, 1750). The inhabitants of New
Gravel Lane and Shadwell were required to sweep and clean the footpaths
every morning (15 George III. c. 54 ; New Gravel Lane and Shadwell Act, 1774).
3 15 George III. c. 15 ; St. George's in the East Poor, etc., Act, 1774.
4 Including (a) the Commissioners of Sewers and the 25 Ward Motes and
Ward Councils of the City of London, (6) the Open or Select Vestries of the three
or four score parishes outside the City, (c) the four or five score of Paving
Boards (already described by us as Improvement Commissioners) established
by Local Acts, and (d) a score or two of separate Turnpike Trusts.
326 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
manuscript minutes of these Vestries or Commissioners during
the ensuing three-quarters of a century, we watch their continual
difficulties over this service — the inveterate neglect of the house-
holders to perform their share of the duty of cleansing and the
complete failure of the public authority to enforce this obligation,
the careless and unscientific agreements made with the new race
of contractors who came forward as Scavengers and Rakers, the
constant failure of these to carry out their contracts with any
strictness, and the perpetual conflict in the minds of the Vestry-
men between the desirability of clean streets on the one hand
and the pecuniary saving to the parish on the other, of accepting
the very lowest tender at which they could get some one to agree
to make any pretence at performance of the loosely defined
service. The general standard of cleanliness remained scandal-
ously low, even in the most important thoroughfares. Between
1798 and 1801, for instance, when the Paving Committee of St.
Margaret and St. John, Westminster, insisted on retaining a
certain Scavenger who took the contract cheaper than any other,
the complaints of the inhabitants at his neglect to discharge his
duties are loud and incessant, culminating, perhaps, in April
1799, in the following petition from the combined householders
of Parliament Street, at the very entrance of the House of
Commons. " The inhabitants of the said street would be obliged
to the Committee to give orders to the Scavenger to immediately
cleanse the said street, and in future to attend thereto, it having
been most shamefully neglected, and was become one of the
filthiest streets in London ; that it had not been cleaned all over
since 8 Nov. last, except the kennels cleared, and the mud then
left in such heaps as to be a greater nuisance than could be
submitted to." Even the requirements of the local authorities
were amazingly small. Thus, the Hans Town (Chelsea) Street
Commissioners only required " the upper end of Sloane Street
... to be cleansed at least eight times, Sloane Street and the
several other streets and places . . . at least six times within the
year " ; and to remove the dust and ashes of the householders
only when specifically required to do so. 1 If this was the state
of things in such thoroughfares as Parliament Street and Sloane
Street, it may be imagined how utterly neglected and filthy
remained the minor streets, lanes, courts and alleys in which
1 See advertisement in Morning Advertiser, 25th February 1806.
CLEANSING THE PROVINCIAL TOWNS 327
the vast majority of Londoners resided. ' The dust in dry
weather," writes a very sober critic in 1824, " is greatly annoying
and highly injurious to goods and furniture, to say nothing of
personal feeling and annoyance in having the eyes blinded and
the mouth choked therewith. And no sooner is there a wet day
than the streets become ponds of mud. By the time the accumu-
lation is almost intolerable, the Scavenger commences the annoy-
ance of sweeping and scraping it into his carts, and splashing and
bespattering every passer-by not prudent enough to cross out of
his way, and content to be covered over the ankles with mud
rather than over neck and ears." 1
The story of street cleansing in the English provincial towns
has been even less carefully recorded than that in the Metropolis,
but such information as we possess indicates that the various
towns went through much the same development as that we
have described, marked by a diversity in the dates of the several
stages at least equal to that shown by the different districts of
the Metropolis, but exhibiting always the same gradual trans-
formation of the householder's individual obligation into a
collective service. Thus in the small Municipal Corporations of
Louth and Rochester in the seventeenth century, as in that of
Coventry in the fifteenth century, we find the individual house-
holder expressly obliged by municipal byelaw, enforced by sub-
stantial fines, not merely to sweep the whole width of the street
and clear out the kennels every week, but also " to carry the dirt
away before twelve of the clock at night." 2 A further stage had
1 Observations on the Defective Slate of the Pavement of the Metropolis, by
William Deykes, 1824, p. 8. Street cleansing was not omitted from Michael
Angelo Taylor's Act of 1817, which, contained clauses giving to all paving
authorities within the Metropolis, irrespective of their Local Acts, power to
cleanse the streets, to contract with " scavengers, rakers or cleansers," to
appoint inspectors of street cleansing, and to dispose of the refuse. The con-
tractors were required under penalty to take their carts through every street,
and to give notice to the inhabitants in every narrow passage ; to accept and
remove all soil, ashes, cinders, rubbish, dust, dirt and filth without charge to
the inhabitants ; and to accept and remove at the householder's cost all build-
ing rubbish, and all earth, soil or rubbish produced by cleansing or repairing
sewers or drams. But the Act made no change in the organisation.
2 The Corporation of Coventry, in 1419 and 1423, ordered every house-
holder, not only to repair but also to cleanse the pavement in front of his tene-
ment {History of Coventry, by B. Poole, 1870 ; p. 343). The " Burrough Lawes "
of 1640 of Louth in Lincolnshire include the following clause : " Item, it is
ordered that every person or persons farming, using or occupying any houses
or grounds adjoining to any street or common way within the said town shall
weekly upon Saturday cause the cawsey or pavement of the said street or
328 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
been reached, already in mediaeval times, by such towns as
Southampton, which had supplemented the exertions of the
individual citizens in sweeping the streets, by the appointment of
one or more public scavengers, paid either by the several house-
holders or out of corporate funds, to carry away the ashes and
refuse. 1 Outside the range of the byelaws of Municipal Corpora-
tions, we do not find that any provision was made for street
cleansing prior to the eighteenth century. In 1716 one of the
innumerable Highway Acts empowered Justices of the Peace in
Quarter Sessions " in cities and market towns, not having
already particular provision made for them therein by any
former law," to appoint one or more scavengers for cleansing
the streets, to give directions for their repair, and to authorise a
sixpenny rate for these purposes. 2 Whether this Act was
intended to apply to any but towns having their own Courts of
Quarter Sessions is not clear ; but in the County records of West
Kent and Suffolk we come across isolated instances of the power
being exercised by the County Justices, for the benefit of such
unincorporated market towns as East Greenwich, Hadleigh and
Bungay, 3 and there may well have been others. It was probably
common way against his, her or their house, houses or ground to he well and
sufficiently swept and made clean, and the filth and dung carried away, upon
pain of every one offending for each offence sixpence " (Louth Old Corporation
Records, by R. W. Goulding, 1891, p. 30). The Byelaws of Rochester, in Kent,
as codified in 1673, require that "the inhabitants, as well within the high
streets of the city as in the lanes and passages,' shall every Saturday in the
afternoon and at any other time when required by the Mayor or his Deputy,
or by his order, clean the pavement before their houses, and the kennels there-
unto adjoining, and carry the dirt away, before twelve of the clock at night.
Twelve pence forfeit" (An Authentic Copy of the Charter and Byelaivs of the
< ity of Rochester, 1809, p. 35).
1 By ancient custom at Southampton (Hampshire) every householder paid
" scavage money," a fixed due collected in each ward by two persona chosen
at the Court Leet, who also directed the Town Scavengers in their work
(History of Southampton, by J. S. Davies, 1883, p. 124). There was also appointed
in 1054 by the Court Leet a Town Chimney-sweep, bound and entitled to
sweep all chimneys at fourpence each, but also paid a penny a year by each
householder " as is used in many other cities and towns, called by the name of
a Smoke Penny " (Court Loet Minutes of 1054 : ibid.).
2 1 George I. c. 52. (The first session of George 1. lasted from 1st August
1714 to 20th June 1710, and this was one of its latest statutes.) An error in
drafting was corrected by i) Georjre II. c. 18 (1735). Exactly similar powers
wen- granted t<> the justices of the municipal borough of Beverley "at their
general Quarter Sessions," by the Local Act, 13 George I. c. 4 (the Beverley
Beak Act, 1726).
:; Thus we have found an order of the West Kent Quarter Sessions of 1738,
reciting a petition from the inhabitants of East Greenwich : appointing, i \-
WOOLWICH 329
in connection with an appointment under this Act that the
energetic Vestry of Woolwich in 1717, having lately paved the
streets at considerable expense, ordered " the present Scavenger
and the Scavenger for the time being . . . twice every week
throughout the whole year . . . (to) go through the said town
and streets thereof with horse and cart," in order to receive
" all the sand and ashes " " brought out of their houses by the
inhabitants for this purpose." 1
We suspect, however, that any collective organisation for
cleansing the streets and disposing of household refuse remained
quite exceptional, either in the ancient corporate towns or in
the growing villages, until the passing, for one place after another,
of those Local Acts to which we have so often had to refer, and
which became so prominent a feature of the latter half of the
eighteenth century. The cleansing clauses of these Acts obtained
by provincial towns do not essentially differ from those granted
to the Metropolitan authorities. They show the same three
stages of development — the enforcement of the householder's
obligation to " scrape, sweep and cleanse " the pavement and
individually remove the dirt and refuse ; 2 the appointment of
pressly in pursuance of the statutes of 1716 and 1735, a local brewer and a
local publican, "to be Scavengers for cleansing and repairing all the streets
within the said town," for a year ; and making a rate of three half pence in
the pound on all owners of houses, etc., to be collected by three named shop-
keepers who are to account to any two Justices (MS. Order, 4th October 1738,
in county archives, Kent Quarter Sessions). In the Minutes of the Suffolk
Quarter Sessions we find other cases. In 1765 " this Court doth nominate
and appoint R. F. and R. P. of Hadleigh to be Scavengers of the said Parish of
Hadleigh for the year ensuing, and doth direct them from time to time to
remove the dirt and filth out of the streets, and to sell or otherwise dispose
of the same as to them shall seem meet " (MS. Minutes Quarter Sessions,
Suffolk, 21st January 1765). So, in 1767, "this Court doth empower the
Scavengers of the Divisions of Bungay, Boyscot and Bungay-Burgh, in the
town of Bungay, to make a rate of 6d. in the pound for . . . repairing and
cleansing the streets " {ibid. 27th April 1767).
1 MS. Vestry Minutes, Woolwich, 25th October 1717.
2 When, in the course of the eighteenth century, town after town obtained
statutory powers of enforcing the householder's customary obligation to cleanse
the pavement, this was (differing from the City of London) defined as extending
to the middle of the street, and often also as to frequency. Thus at Beverley
(East Riding of Yorkshire), where the need for keeping clear the creek or haven
of the town had led, as early as 1726, to a Local Act, the obligation on the
householders to " clean so much of the . . . streets, lanes and public places
... as lie contiguous to and fronting their respective houses . . . between
the same and the middle of the streets," had been, by that statute, still left
resting only on " the ancient usage and custom of the said town," and it was
found impossible to get the work satisfactorily done. Hence; in 1745, the
33Q THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
public " rakers, scavengers or cleansers " to carry away the dirt
and refuse which had been " conveniently heaped " for them by
the householders ; and the final limitation of the householder's
obligation to sweep only the footway. 1 In the administration of
these clauses by the provincial towns we find exactly the same
features as in the Metropolis — the same practical inability to
enforce the performance of his duty to the individual house-
holder, 2 consequently the same unswept streets and uncleared
justices of the peace for the borough obtained power in a new Act (18 George II.
c. 13) to require the inhabitants, by summons of the public bellman, to cleanse
their streets down to the central denter stone, under penalty of having the
work done at the defaulter's expense. When the neighbouring borough of
Hull, ten years later, found it necessary to enforce by Act the householder's
paving obligation, a similar clause to that of Beverley as to cleansing was
also enacted (28 George II. c. 27, see. 20, of Hull Paving Act, 1755).
sequently Local Streets Acts for different towns enacted a similar obligation
to cleanse the pavement with various degrees of particularity. At Nottingham
in 1762, by a Lighting Act copied by Coventry, the obligation to cleanse down
to the central gutter was definitely imposed, but the frequency left undefined
(///story of Coventry, by B. Poole, 1870, pp. 343-345). By the Manchester and
Salford Act of 1765 every frontager was to sweep down to the middle of the
street twice a week (5 George III. c. 81 ; see the contemporary print, An Act
for Cleansing and Lighting . . . Manchester and Salford, etc., 1765). Birming-
ham was content to make the duty a weekly one, to be performed every Friday
(9 George III. c. 83, Birmingham Lighting, etc., Act, 1769 ; History of Birn
ham, by William Hutton). At Plymouth, too, the duty was a weekly one, to
be discharged every Friday, between six and two o'clock (10 George III. c. 14,
Plymouth Paving, Lighting and Watching Act, 1770). At Wakefield the day
appointed was Saturday, at any time between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. (11 George III.
c. 44, Wakefield Paving and Cleansing Act, 1771).
1 21 George III. c. 36, Devizes Streets Act, "17S0, requires persons " to
sweep, scrape and cleanse the footways before their respective houses . . . not
less than eight feet from the same," on Wednesday and Saturday in every
week. At Pontefract in 1810 the obligation was daily to sweep the fool
pavements and also the gutter or channel of the carriage-way (50 George III.
c. 40, Pontefract Streets Act, 1810). At Bishopwearmouth, Sunderland and
many other places, the foot pavement only was mentioned, and the cleaning
is to take place three times a week (50 George III. c. 25, Bishop Wearmouth
Streets Act, 1810 ; ibid. c. 27, Sunderland Streets Act, 1810). Hastings, in
1820, required the occupier to sweep the footpath or pavement, and to collect
together the soil and dirt therefrom, so as not to obstruct either the carriage-
or footways, or the channels or water courses, in order that the same may be
removed by the public scavenger (1 George IV. c. 12, Hastings Streets Act,
IS20). The Leeds Commissioners in 1838 order the occupiers to sweep the
causeways or foot pavements daily before 9 a.m. (MS. Minutes, Improvement
Commissioners, Leeds, 5th December 1838).
2 It i3 the rarest thing to find any mention of householders being actually
proceeded against for neglect to sweep the pavement. " Lasl week at Man-
chester," says a Bristol journal of 1786, "seventy persons were fined, and
paid the penalty of five shillings each, f. »r neglecting bo have the streets swept
daily before tlicir houses, agreeably to an Act of Parliament. As our m
t rales (at Bristol) are about preparing a bill for regulating the polioe of this
LIVERPOOL 331
kennels, the same interminable series of difficulties with the
contracting rakers or cleansers, and the same resulting condition
of disorder and neglect. The disastrous division of responsi-
bility between the householder and the raker — the separation of
the task of sweeping up from that of carrying away — led every-
where to the continuous presence of the " heaps of dirt " which
seemed to contemporaries an inevitable incident of the street.
Sometimes the rakers, who were now often known as public
scavengers, had to collect twice a week, sometimes once a week,
and sometimes only when required to do so by the local authority.
But the heaps remained a constant feature of the street long after
the duty of sweeping up the carriage-way had been united with
that of carrying away the dirt and refuse. 1 Thus at Liverpool in
1797, where a contemporary critic admits that the carriage-ways
were " generally well cleansed " by the Town Scavengers, " who
are regular and diligent in their duty, but in the execution of
their business while they remove one evil they never fail to
create a greater ; the soil, instead of being immediately carried
away as in London and other places, is raked into heaps about
twelve feet by eight, and two feet deep. These cloacinian
repositories are common in every part of the town, and remain
eight or ten days, and sometimes longer, before they are carted
away, whereby passengers in a dark night, and often in the day,
tread in them to the midleg, and children are sometimes nearly
suffocated by falling into them." 2 Thirty years later the same
city, a correspondent submits it to their consideration whether the insertion
of a clause in it, for enforcing so wholesome and decent a practice, is not highly
necessary " (Bristol Gazette, 9th November 1786). Three years later the same
journal vainly calls on the Justices to enforce the new Local Act in this respect.
" Were the magistrates to levy the fine a few times in the winter months, it
would awaken the attention of some of the inhabitants " (ibid. 3rd December
1789). At Liverpool in 1797, in spite of repeated Local Acts, it was observed
that " the footpaths are generally very dirty, the pebbles gathering mud in
their interstices, and as the custom is not general of sweeping daily before the
houses, it soon becomes a clammy dirt, which adheres to the feet of the passenger
and is carried into the public shops " (General Description of the History of
Liverpool, 1797, p. 274).
1 At Plymouth power was given in 1772 to compound with the individual
frontagers for their obligation to cleanse the pavements (12 George III. c. 8,
Plymouth Paving Act, 1771). So at Wakefield it was provided in 1770 that
the Street Commissioners might compound "for the sweeping and cleansing
to be done by such inhabitants . . . provided such composition money be always
paid down in advance " (11 George III. c. 44, Wakefield Streets Act, 1770).
2 General Description of the History of Liverpool, 1797, p. 274 ; see Memorials
of Liverpool, by Sir J. A. Picton, 1875, vol. i. pp. 275-276.
332 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
practice still prevailed. The Scavengers, complains a corre-
spondent in 1828, rake up the mud " into the channels in great
quantities," where they leave it for several days, " whereby the
water courses are completely stopped up, and several respectable
persons have, during the last week, been almost up to their
knees, especially in the night time." 1 But Liverpool was, in
respect of cleansing its streets, not worse than other towns.
Here is a glimpse of Chester in 1825. : ' For weeks past not a
besom has been employed in this populous thoroughfare till
Friday last, and then, forsooth, an old invalided man and a
solitary female were employed on that long line of road. Nor
is this all. From Friday to yesterday the accumulated heaps of
mud . . . were suffered to remain without being carted away,
to the serious annoyance of neighbours and passengers." 2 We
conclude this vision of the heaps of dirt and filth by the following
satirical complaint to the Manchester Times of 1828. ' I shall
be glad to be informed . . . what course I must pursue to find
a firkin of butter which my carter says fell off his cart between
Nos. 2 and 24 in Neverswept Street, Manchester. He says he
saw it drop on the sludge, but being obliged by the law to
attend to his team on the one hand, and being afraid that, if
he stopped, his cart would run a risk of sinking in the mire
on the other, he drove to the end of the street, and, on his
return, found to his great grief that the firkin had sunk to
rise no more ! " 3
This account of practical failures in street cleansing must not,
however, be allowed to obscure the fact that, alike in the Metro-
1 Liverpool Mercury, 15th February 1828. These contemporary records
bear out Picton's subsequent reminiscences of Liverpool during the first quarter
of the nineteenth century. "There were Scavengers to clean the streets. The
way in which they worked was to sweep the mud into long parallelograms here
and there, about a foot deep, which were left for days until carts could be got
to fetch it away. These heaps were called Corporation beds, from the notion
that they were sometimes used as places of repose by the guests returning
from the Corporation feasts " (Sir J. A. Picton, by J. Allanson Picton, 1891,
p. 19). Nor did things improve. In 1835 the local newspaper denounces " the
filthy state of tho streets in almost every quarter of the town," which are
declared to be "in a far more filthy anil dirty state this winter"' than ever
within living memory. "Why," asks a correspondent, "arc we charged for
Scavengers ? They do little or nothing, and have sinecures. Sometimes yon
Bee a great number in one spot near the docks, in each other's way, idle and
staring about them " (Liverpool Mercury, Oth February is:::.).
a Chester Courant, 15th March 1825.
3 Quoted in Liverpool Mercury, :20th December 1X23.
THE PRACTICE OF MANURING LAND 333
polis and in the larger provincial towns, the first thirty years of
the nineteenth century witnessed a notable advance in the
freedom from obstructive filth of the principal thoroughfares.
This advance was due, in part, to the rise to power, in the repre-
sentative Vestries and in the new bodies of Improvement Com-
missioners, of the well-to-do shopkeeping and manufacturing
class, permanently residing in the towns, and constantly travers-
ing the streets on foot. It was brought about largely by the
elaboration of a detailed municipal code for the Suppression of
Nuisances, which we shall describe in another volume. But
part of the progress was the result of more extensive and more
efficient municipal enterprise in the direction of scavenging. To
this increased activity there contributed two adventitious con-
temporary circumstances — the growing demand for and increased
value of ashes and manure between about 1790 and 1830, and the
desire to find some employment for the multitude of paupers
which the Old Poor Law in these years was producing.
Until the last quarter of the eighteenth century, both the
practice of manuring land and the value of animal excreta for
this purpose appear to have been practically unknown to many,
and perhaps to the majority of English farmers. Arthur Young,
in his tours, between 1767 and 1780, records his amazement at
the neglect of farmers in all parts of the country to take advan-
tage of opportunities already known to every agricultural expert.
" There is no town in the kingdom of any size," he exclaims
with eager enthusiasm, " but what yields a considerable quantity
of manure annually — ashes of wood and coal, horse-dung, the
cleaning of streets, the riddance of privies, poultry and hog
dung, shambles offal, foot and a variety of other manures." 1
Yet this was nearly everywhere going to waste. At Lynn, in
Norfolk, for instance, within easy reach of the Holkham experi-
ments, he saw the town dung, in 1767, simply piled in a heap on
the seashore. 2 Similar heaps were to be seen in the neighbour-
hood of the Metropolis and of other large towns. But at some
1 A Six Weeks' Tour through the Southern Counties, by Arthur Young, 3rd
edition, 1772, p. 293.
2 "At one place, which is called the Fort, is a heap of exceeding rich
manure" — the accumulated human excreta of the town — "which suffers no
other decrease than what high spring tides occasion in washing part of it away ;
and it is all brought here in carts at the expense of the inhabitants " (ibid.
pp. 32, 292).
334 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
date between 1750 and 1780, according to local knowledge and
local circumstances, the value of town manure began, in one
place after another, rapidly to rise. Already in 1770, the
facilities for water-carriage and the enterprise of a local innovator
had made the excreta of Hull into a valuable property. " All
sorts of manure," says Arthur Young, " are bought at high
prices at Hull, and carried nine or ten miles round. . . . About
fifty years ago the manuring from Hull was begun by a poor man
who hired a close of grass ; he had four asses which he employed
constantly in carrying away ashes and dung, and spreading them
upon his pasture . . . whoever brought away manure, for many
years were paid for taking it. Twenty-five years ago it was to
be had for sixpence to a shilling a load ; by the country around
by degrees all coming into the practice, the price has arose to
its present height ; extraordinary good stuff will sell for five
shillings a load." x " Formerly, not half a century ago," writes
Marshall in 1799, of the Metropolis, " inns and livery stables
paid the farmers, who brought them in hay and straw, for taking
away their dung, or hired carts to carry it away to the outskirts
of the town ; where large mounds of it remained but a few years
ago. Twenty years ago the price in the stable yards was only
a shilling to eighteen pence a load ; and even at this time, I
understand no more than two shillings or half a crown is given
for a full cart load of horse dung produced from hay and corn of
the first quality." 2 At a somewhat later date other kinds of
town refuse acquired an exchange value. Means were found to
utilise the waste products of various manufacturing industries,
and these soon ceased, accordingly, to augment the town's
rubbish heaps. But the most important of these changes was
the enormous extension of brickmaking, especially in the neigh-
bourhood of London, and the discovery that coal-ashes, cinders,
and generally town "dust" were valuable ingredients to mix
with the clay. The huge " dust heaps " accumulated by the
contractors all round the Metropolis became possessions of great
value, for which, it is said, the demand was suddenly increased
in 1814—1815 by their being eagerly bought up for shipment to
1 A Six Months' Tour through the North of England, by Arthur Young, 2nd
edition, 1770, vol. i. p. 163.
- Minutes, Experiment*, Observations and General Remarks on Agriculture
in the Southern Counties, by \\ . Marshall (edition of L799, p. 31).
THE " GOLDEN DUSTMAN" 335
Russia, where the rebuilding of Moscow was calling for more
bricks than that whole country could then supply. Thus it was
that towards the end of the eighteenth century the pecuniary
value of town refuse came to exceed the cost of its collection and
removal, and it looked as if the service of scavenging, taken as a
whole, was destined to become actually a source of municipal
revenue. In 1798 and 1799, when the Paving Committee of St.
Margaret and St. John, Westminster, advertised for tenders for
cleansing the streets and removing the refuse of that parish, the
lowest tenderers demanded £135 and £150 respectively for doing
the work. But in 1800 one contractor agreed to pay the Com-
mittee £40 ; in 1801 another gave £150, and in 1808 another as
much as £265 for the privilege. 1 It was held up in 1796 as an
example to Bath, which still paid for the cleaning of its streets,
that the well-administered parish of Marylebone was already
drawing no less than £1050 a year from the scavenging con-
tractors, who willingly paid this sum. for the privilege of sweeping
the streets and collecting the street sweepings and household
ashes. 2 So keen, indeed, was the competition for household
refuse in London that Marylebone in 1803 got as much as £2350
from its dust contractor, who undertook to send his carts round
all the streets, either weekly, fortnightly, or monthly, according
to specification, to keep clean all the footways and carriage-ways,
and even to prevent snow or ice from blocking the drains. 3 In
the little town of Bradford, in Yorkshire, which had got a body
of Commissioners in 1803, the disposal of the privilege of gathering
up the muck led at once to petty jobbery, the new Commissioners
tumbling over each other in their eagerness to make a little
profit out of the body to which they belonged. One, we are
told, offered " to sweep ... for the manure " ; only to be
promptly outbid by two of his colleagues, " who agreed to sweep
. . . twice a week . . . and pay the Commissioners thirty-six
shillings per annum for the privilege." 4 In London the united
parishes of St. Andrew, Holborn, and St. George the Martyr were
1 MS. Minutes, Paving Committee, Vestry of St. Margaret and St. John,
Westminster, 6th September 1798, 6th June 1799, 6th August 1800, 4th August
1801, 24th May 1808.
2 Letter in Gazetteer, 4th March 1796.
3 MS. Vestry Minutes, Marylebone, 1st March 1800, 19th February 1803.
4 Historical Notes on the Bradford Corporation, by William Cudworth, 1881,
p. 50.
336 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
getting £780 in 1808 ; whilst even the little Liberty of Safiron
Hill made £250. 1 From the " street muck," it was natural to
proceed to the household excreta ; and Local Authorities sought,
by Local Acts, to vest in themselves the ownership of all the
excreta and refuse of the town, in order that they might sell it
for a high price. At Brighton, for instance, the Commissioners
; ' let the town soil " to contractors, together with the ashes, for
£350, and presently for £560 a year. 2
We need not follow the fortunes of the Local Authorities in
their several dealings with the new race of dust contractors.
The greatest diversity, it is clear, prevailed in the terms obtained
between place and place and even from year to year. 3 Presently,
from economic changes which we cannot here investigate, the
market value of town refuse fell as rapidly, and with as much
diversity between place and place, as it had risen. The removal
of human excreta first became unprofitable, then the sweeping
up of the " street muck," and ultimately also the emptying of
dust bins. Already before 1835 we see the tide turning. The
Paving Committee of St. Margaret and St. John, Westminster,
which had in 1825 received as much as £625 from its contractors,
had, in 1831, to pay £150 for the same service. 4 The Vestry of
Marylebone, which in 1803 was receiving £2350 a year out of its
scavenging, taken as a whole, was in 1830 paying its contractors
£2870 a year for " slopping " — that is,, cleaning the streets —
and only receiving from them £1170 for the privilege of collecting
the " breeze," or household dust and ashes. 5 In 1842 the Poor
1 MS. Minutes, Westminster Paving Commissioners, 24th May 1808.
2 MS. Minutes, Improvement Commissioners, Brighton, 1820-182O. In
1798 we see the Town Council of Plymouth ordering " that the dung and soil
i if the town be advertised to be let from Ladyday next on the present tenant
giving up his take in writing " (MS. Minutes, Town Council, Plymouth, 9th
March 1799).
a Details are nearly always lacking, but the pecuniary value of the con-
tracts must have varied enormously according to (a) the extent of the street
sweeping and other laborious work that was stipulated for; (6) the Btriotness
with which the conditions were enforced ; (r) whether the contractor obtained
" street muck," household ashes and '* dust,'" or the emptyings of stables and
privies, or only some of these classes of refuse, and in what proportions;
(il) the local facilities for water carriage or other circumstances affecting the
COSl of distribution : (< ) the local demand for the various kinds of refuse ; and,
linally, (/) the administrative capacity of the Local Authority in obtaining the
possible terms and defeating the rings and " knock-outs."
1 MB. Minutes, Paving Committee, St. Margaret and St. John, Westminster,
loth Manh L825, December 1831.
' .MS. Vestry .Minutes, Marylehone, 27th February 1830.
THE VALUE OF MUCK
337
Law Commissioners report, with regard to the Metropolis, that
" with the exception of coal ashes (which are indispensable for
making bricks), some descriptions of lees (from the soap-boilers),
and a few other inconsiderable exceptions, no refuse in London
pays half the expense of removal by cartage. ... A consider-
able contractor for scavenging, etc., . . . states, with regard to
the most productive manure, ' I have given away thousands of
loads of night-soil ; we knew not what to do with it.' " x The
dust and ashes of the London households, though still retaining
some exchange value, ceased about the same time to yield as
much as would pay for the service of sweeping the streets and
removing the street muck, with which the emptying of dust-
bins was usually combined. 2 From about 1840, therefore, the
1 General Report of the Poor Law Commissioners on the Sanitary Condition
of the Labouring Population, 1842, p. 46. " The great difficulty of the cleansing
of the Metropolis arises from the want of proper receptacles for the filth. There
is no filth in the Metropolis now that, as a general rule, will pay the expense of
collection and removal by cart, except the ashes from the houses and the soap-
lees from the soap-boilers, and some of the night soil from the East End of the
town where there happen to be in the immediate vicinity some market gardens
where it can be used at once without distant or expensive carriage. The
charge of removing night-soil from the poorest tenements may be about £1
per tenement — one house with another the expense may be said to be in London
about 10s. per year, as the cesspools may be emptied once in two years. One
house with another they will not produce more than a load of refuse from the
cesspools. ... I have given away thousands of loads of night-soil ; as we have
no means of disposing of it. We know not what to do with it. . . . The
sweepings from the macadamized roads consist of so much of granite that it is
of very little use indeed " (Evidence of a great dust contractor ; in General
Report of the Poor Law Commissioners on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring
Population, 1842, pp. 379-380).
2 We place here an interesting account of the annual proceeds of the
ashes, dust, breeze, etc., of Camberwell from 1815 to 1845, put up for sale by
auction :
1815
1816
1817
1818
1819
1820
1821
1822
1823
1824
1825
£68
67
62
125
180
280
148
320
520
471
437
1826 .
. £200
1837 .
£127
1827 .
245
1838 .
79
1828 .
62
1839 .
217
1829 .
83
1840 .
516
1830 .
15
1841 .
137
1831 .
15
1842 .
215
1832 .
No bidders
1843 .
275
1833 .
No sale
1844 .
378
1834 .
£70
1845 .
410
1835 .
207
1836 .
90
( Ye History of Camberwell, by W. H. Blanch, p. 164.) The effect of the depres-
sion in the building trade in South London, which followed on the panic of
1825, is very marked.
333 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
service of scavenging gradually became once more a source of
municipal expense, as it had been half a century before. 1
This remarkable rise in the market value of town refuse,
temporary though it proved to be, naturally reacted on the
organisation for its removal from the houses and streets. The
Rakers or contractors, we may believe, were more diligent in
their collection, as the material became of pecuniary value.
Vestrymen and Commissioners were more willing to see the
service of scavenging expand — to make it co-extensive with the
town, with more frequent collections — when this did not involve
any additional burden on the rates. So far the economic revolu-
tion may be presumed to have promoted the greater cleanliness
of the town. But there were, from the point of view of public
health, grave drawbacks. When filth became of pecuniary
value, householders were not so willing to have it removed, and
preferred to let it accumulate, in order to dispose of it to greater
advantage. Already in 1767 the inhabitants of Portsmouth
had objected to a proposal of the new Local Act, which would
have given the Commissioners the right to collect from them all
their " cinders, ashes, dirt, soil or rubbish," and a proviso had
been inserted allowing them to " keep or use " this valuable
material within their own gardens or yards. 2 But those in-
habitants who had not gardens or yards, where they could use
their refuse, did not see why they should not make money out
of it, so an amending Act of 1775 permitted any inhabitant of
Portsmouth to sell or dispose of his refuse if he chose. 3 The
householder's property in his refuse was further protected by
its being made a punishable offence for any one, other than the
parish officer or contractor, to take away the dust or ashes from
any house, unless with the owner's consent. 4 In other places,
where the Local Authorities made profitable contracts for the
disposal of the dust and filth, it became necessary to protect
1 We think the Poor Law Commissioners took too optimistic a view in
1842, when they reported that the receipts from dust equalled the cost of street
cleaning: "At the rate of expense of one large parish, the present cost of
cleansing in the Metropolis may be estimated at about £40,000 per annum.
This expense, however, is generally repaid by tho sale of the coal ashes, whioh
are used in the manufacture of bricks " {General Report of the Poor Law Com-
missioners on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population, 1842, p. 53).
- 8 George III. c. 59, Portsmouth Lighting and Watching Act of 1707.
3 16 George III. c. 59, Portsmouth Lighting and Watching Act of 1775.
1 13 George III. c. 48, Marylebone Watching, Paving and Lighting Act of
1772.
PLACES OF DEPOSIT 339
the contractor in his bargain by giving him a monopoly. 1 All
this saving and storing of excreta, and the wholesale and retail
dealing in it that went on, led, it is clear, to very unsavoury
practices, which continued right down to the end of the period
with which we are dealing. " In the parts of some towns," we
read in 1840, " adjacent to the rural districts the cesspools are
emptied gratuitously for the sake of the manure ; but they only
do this when there is a considerable accumulation. . . . For the
saving of cartage as well as the convenience of use, accumulations
of refuse are frequently allowed to remain and decompose and
dry amidst the habitations of the poorer classes." 2 At Witham,
in Essex, we are told in 1842 that " a great number of the in-
habitants accumulate filth and manure for the purpose of sale." 3
The most noisome accumulations continued in the towns, especi-
ally in the poorest and most crowded districts. At Leeds, for
instance, it is difficult to say whether the contractor, or his
neglects, created the greater sanitary nuisance. From one small
court there was removed at the time of the cholera (1832) no
less than 75 cart-loads of manure " which had been untouched
for years." 4 Meanwhile " the contractor for the street sweep-
ings . . . rented a plot of vacant land in the centre of the
. . . largest ward in point of population ... as a depot for
the sweepings . . . both vegetable and general, for the purpose
of exsiccation and accumulating till they could be sold as manure
and carried away. . . . The inhabitants complained of . . . the
insufferable stench." 5 It is, we think, impossible to avoid the
1 Thus the Manchester Commissioners resolve in 1809, " That the practice
of selling or otherwise disposing of any manure from the streets by the super-
intendent of the sweepers or any other person, except Samuel Foxcroft as the
agent of the Commissioners, and except such as shall be expressly authorised
by the Commissioners, is highly improper, and ought, if repeated, to be severely
punished" (MS. Minutes, Improvement Commissioners, Manchester, 12th April
1809).
2 General Report of the Poor Law Commissioners on the Sanitary Condition
of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, 1842, p. 46.
3 Ibid. p. 13. The fall in value led to still further evils : " The object of
the nightmen is to get rid of the soil early, and return with the cart to complete
the emptying in one night. Formerly, before the new police were so much
about, the men would empty the cart in any bye-street or place where they
could. . . . The site of the new London University (College) was a place in
which the refuse was deposited, so was the site of the new row of grand houses
in Hyde Park Gardens . . . the site of Belgrave Square was another place of
deposit " (Evidence of a great dust contractor : in ibid. p. 381).
4 Ibid, p. 41.
6 Ibid. p. 47. The climax of horrors was reached, we think, in some of the
340 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
conclusion that, whilst the temporary saleability of town refuse
may have quickened the movement towards a complete scaveng-
ing system, the very notion of deriving profit from town refuse
was, on the whole, inimical to sanitary progress. The organisa-
tion and methods for collection and disposal which yielded the
greatest profit were not necessarily those most advantageous to
the public health ; whilst the phantasm of getting a municipal
revenue, or at any rate making the town refuse pay for its own
removal, long prejudiced town administrators against incurring
the expenditure necessary for this most efficient performance of
this service. 1
More useful to sanitation may have been the desire to find
employment for the large numbers of able-bodied labourers who
were, between 1795 and 1835, in receipt of Poor Law relief.
This policy took two forms. In some parishes the local authority
in charge of the streets itself directly employed the paupers,
supervising their operations as it chose, and remunerating them
as it thought fit. In others the Improvement Commissioners
merely entered into contracts with the local Poor Law authority,
under which the latter undertook to clean the streets for a lump
sum. We shall deal elsewhere with the Poor Law aspect of this
question, depending as it did upon such considerations as the
amount of the pay given to the pauper and the conditions of his
employment, whether the experiment served as a test of destitu-
tion or operated as a reformatory regimen. Regarded from the
standpoint of street cleansing, the results are neither so con-
clusive nor so well recorded.
slums of tho Scottish towns. "At Greenock in 1840," it is reported that "in
one part of the street there is a dunghill — yet it is too large to be called a dung-
hill. I do not mistake its size when I say it contains a hundred cubic yards
of impure filth collected from all parts of the town. It is never removed ; it
is the stock-in-trade of a person who deals in dung ; he retails it by cartful.
To please his customers, he always keeps a nucleus, as the older the filth is
the higher the price." The Glasgow courts of 1840 contained spaces occupied
entirely by dung-heaps. "There were," we are told, "no privies or drains
there, and tho dung-heaps received all filth which the swarm of wretched
inhabitants could give." The reason was " that a considerable part of the
it of the houses was paid by tho produce of the dung-heaps. . . . The
dwellers of these courts had converted their shame into a kind of money by
which their lodging was to be paid" {General Report of the Poor Law Com-
missioners ou tin- Sanitary Condition <>j the Labouring Population of Great Britain,
1842, pp. 24, 47).
1 Tin 1 1 list i oiitractors were said in 1842 to bo hostile to improved methods
"f removing refuse which would diminish its saleable value (ibid. p. 318).
EMPLOYMENT OF PAUPERS 341
In those cases in which the Commissioners merely put the
cleansing of the streets out to contract with the local Poor Law
authority, they seem to have made, if anything, a worse bargain
than they did when they entrusted the work to a commercial
contractor. Thus, the Bradford Commissioners, who entered
into such a contract in 1805, quickly demurred to the charge
made by the parish authorities, whilst the streets got into such a
state that a local contemporary declared that they would " dis-
grace a Hottentot settlement." x The Brighton Commissioners,
weary of the perpetual complaints of the neglect of the cleansing
contractor, and alarmed at the rise in the Poor Rate, resolved in
1820 " to treat with the Directors and Guardians for the cleansing
the streets by contract, as it would afford employment for the
poor " ; and to pay them £300 a year. 2 Eighteen months later
we see them, dissatisfied with the results, reverting to the
ordinary contractor. And when in 1826 they again try the
experiment of contracting with the Poor Law authority, paying
£400 a year, a storm of complaints of the filthy state of the
streets burst in upon the Commissioners. " No one street in
the town," it was said, " has been properly cleansed for several
months." 3 In 1832, when cholera was at hand, the Plymouth
Town Council realised how badly the Incorporated Guardians
were doing the work of removing the " town dung and soil,"
and the contract between the two bodies was promptly annulled. 4
The Leeds Commissioners, who were paying £500 a year for
pauper labour, found in 1836 " that the present system of con-
tracting with the Workhouse Board for the services of scavengers
requires improvement ; and that the advantages resulting to
the town under the existing arrangements are not in that respect
such as ought reasonably to be expected from so large an ex-
penditure out of the Improvement Rate." In 1838 they flatly
refused a request for an increase in the charge which they were
paying to the Workhouse Board for the men supplied for scaveng-
ing, " the men so sent being aged and infirm, and consequently
1 Historical Notes on the Bradford Corporation, by William Cudworth, 1881,
p. 50.
2 MS. Minutes, Improvement Commissioners, Brighton, 28th April and 3rd
May 1820.
3 Ibid. 29th June, 8th September, 6th October 1824 ; 1st July 1825, 26th
July 1826 ; Brighton Herald, 5th August 1826.
4 MS. Minutes, Incorporated Guardians, Plymouth, 4th and 25th July
1832.
342 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
not able to do the work, and many others both lame and lazy,
over whom the superintendent has no control." 1 The local
newspaper gives us a vivid account of the " filthy state of the
streets," the heaps of dirt " scraped to the side of the causeways
in many of our streets and left there for days together," and the
" large quantities of ashes and rubbish " suffered to remain on
the pavements. 2
When, however, the local authority in charge of the streets
was either itself the Poor Law authority, or else itself employed
the able-bodied paupers in street cleansing, the results seem
to have been much more favourable. ' We have found the
system," says the Vestry Clerk of St. Paul, Covent Garden, in
1833, : ' of scavenging and watering the streets by means of
pauper labour very useful ; it has kept many off our books. . . .
Our parishioners say that the streets were never kept so clean
as they have been since our new system prevailed ; the fact is
that it is the interest of the contractor to employ as few labourers
in the work as possible, to leave the streets until they are so
dirty that large portions may be. removed at once." 3 ' The
contractors," said another witness in 1833, " generally shuffle off
cleansing the alleys as they cannot get the cart up them ; but
we make our men take the wheelbarrow up the avenues. The
paupers are by this system made spies to prevent any nuisance
that may occasion them trouble. If they see any one throwing
down filth they fetch the superintendent and the party is made
to take it up again." 4 In the panic caused by the approach of
cholera in 1831-1832, many local authorities all over the country
found, in the temporary employment of paupers in removing
nuisances of all kinds, a way of palliating, for the moment, the
effect of the neglect of previous years. Thus, at Leeds, where a
particular district of the town had been left utterly neglected,
' when the cholera was prevalent (in 1832) the wretched state
of this district occasioned great apprehension," and gangs of
paupers were employed for two months " clearing away the
1 MS. .Minnies. Improvement Commissioners, Leeds, 6th April 1S30, 19th
February 1838.
- Leeds Mercury, 2nd March 1839.
:| First Report of Poor Law [nquiry Commissioners. 1S34, Appendix A,
Pari I. (Codd'a Report); evidence of Vestry Clerk of St. Paul, Covent Garden.
'' First Report of Poor Law [nquiry Commissioners, 1S34, Appendix A,
Pari I.
FAILURE OF IMAGINATION 343
immense mass of filth of every description which had accumu-
lated." It was, in fact, as a primitive system of direct employ-
ment of labour, in substitution for contracting, that pauper
labour was most useful. 1 But the very lavishness with which
those street authorities, which were also Poor Law authorities,
could employ the incompetent and unsatisfactory labour of
paupers in street cleansing had a bad effect in deterring such
authorities from adopting mechanical or more highly organised
methods of accomplishing their task. " The parish officers,"
declared Chadwick in 1842, " frequently oppose improved modes
of paving and efficient cleansing (as they generally opposed the
new police on the ground that it diminished the means of sub-
sistence of decrepit old men as watchmen) for the avowed reason
that it is expedient to keep the streets in their present state of
filth in order to keep up the means of employing indigent persons
as street sweepers and sweepers of crossings in removing it." 2
What comes out most vividly from our survey is, however,
not this or that detail of the filthy condition of the town streets,
but the utter inability of the Local Authorities, even after the
cholera of 1832, to form any competent idea of the nature or
the magnitude of their task. It is not merely that the com-
plicated modern problems of the harmless disposal of sewage
and the infinitely various methods of handling all the different
kinds of town garbage were as yet undreamt of. To a Local
Authority of 1835, urban cleansing was still closely bound up
with the mere convenience of passage along the streets. It was
for this that the streets were occasionally swept, and the heaps
of dirt removed. It was to prevent the otherwise inevitable
deposit in the thoroughfares that the dustbins or ashpits were
1 That it was far less effective, and even more costly than would have been
the hiring of labour in the open market, we may well believe. But hardly any
town ventured, at this date, on such an extension of municipal enterprise as
would have been involved in the organisation of a street cleansing department.
At York, in 1825, we find the Commissioners timidly trying the experiment of
not " letting the sweeping " in the Micklegate Ward, and instructing their
Surveyor " to engage weekly such men as he may think necessary to sweep and
cleanse the streets . . . and to employ carts to convey the manure away as it
is collected by the sweepers ; also a yard or place to deposit it in, and to
report . . . the expenses incurred and the probable value of the manure
collected and to dispose of the same as opportunity offers " (MS. Minutes,
Improvement Commissioners, York, 28th August 1825).
2 General Report of the Poor Law Commissioners on the Sanitary Condition of
the Labouring Population, 1842, p. 96.
344 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
emptied and the accumulations of excreta disposed of. Hence
it is that we find that whatever little improvement had been
brought about down to 1835 was confined almost entirely to
the main streets, in which the traffic was greatest, and to which
the principal inhabitants commonly resorted. It was for this
reason that, in every town, as in every district of the Metropolis,
the work of the public scavengers — inefficient at its best — was
restricted to sweeping the surface of the recognised public streets,
leaving wholly untouched all the " private streets," or those not
yet taken over by the Local Authority (which in towns like Man-
chester and Leeds included all the new workmen's quarters), and
all the narrow courts and alleys in which, alike in London and
the provincial towns, the majority of the poorer classes dwelt. 1
The further extension of the municipal service of cleansing to
the backyards or inner courtyards of blocks of buildings was
unthought of — still less the enforcement of a healthy minimum
of cleanliness in the houses themselves. In short, it never
occurred, even to the most energetic and enlightened Local
Authority of 1835, that it had any responsibility for the freedom
from noxious filth of the town as a whole. Not for another
generation, and then not without the sharp lesson of repeated
visitations of Asiatic cholera, did even the beginnings of muni-
cipal sanitation permeate English local administration.
1 The scavenging of Manchester in 1830 was "performed on those streets
which have been declared public highways, a necessary preliminary to which
is that they shall have been finished, with respect to sewering and paving, in a
manner satisfactory to the Surveyor. The number of private, nnpaved and
consequently filthy streets is lamentably great in Manchester . . . the only
scavengers that enter them are dogs and swine, allowed to roam at large ;
and they are useful in their way by consuming some of the offal which is indis-
criminately cast in heaps before the doors . . . the offensive and disgraceful
exhibitions of accumulated filth which present themselves in every quarter"
(" Sketch of the Medical Topography and Statistics of Manchester," by Edmund
Lyon, M.D., in North of England Medical and Surgical .Journal, August 1830,
p. 17). In 1842 it was said that " The expense of cleansing the streets of the
township of Manchester is £o0(l<> per annum. For this sum the first class of
streets, namely the must opulent and the large thoroughfares, are cleansed
once a week, the second class once a fortnight and the third class once a month.
But this provision leaves untouched . . . the courts, alleys and places where
the poorest classes live, and where the cleansing should be daily"' {General
Report of the Poor Latv Commissioners on tin Sanitary Condition of the Labouring
Population, 1842, p. 53).
PASSING OF THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS 345
The Passing of the Improvement Commissioners
It is remarkable that throughout the whole period with
which we are dealing (1689-1835) we find, with respect to these
Improvement Commissioners, practically no popular criticism
or denunciation of their dominant type of constitution, the self-
elected and self-renewing body, limited by substantial property
qualifications. In the last decade of the period the " elective
principle " was, as we have described, generally assumed to be
desirable in any new constitution, but practically no accusation
seems to have been made that the existing bodies of Improvement
Commissioners were corrupt or inefficient. This popular acquies-
cence in the continuance of bodies largely controlled by ex-officio
members — often, indeed, close bodies, in no way dependent on
or responsible to the inhabitants at large — stands in contrast
with the London outcry against the Select Vestries and the wide-
spread provincial objection to the old Municipal Corporations.
We attribute this acquiescence mainly to the fact that the Im-
provement Commissioners were comparatively new bodies, or at
any rate bodies with constitutions recently reformed ; that they
were composed of the principal inhabitants of the locality,
generally without distinction of political party or religious
denomination ; and that the rate which they levied was usually
limited by the Act of Parliament, and was, in practice, uniform
from year to year. To these reasons, for the lack of popular
criticism, must be added the fact that, in most of the towns, the
Improvement Commissioners refrained from obtruding them-
selves on the public attention by any great display of activity
or any serious attempt to enforce even their own regulations.
They lacked, in fact, not only the unlimited powers of the open
Vestry, but also that administrative self-confidence which is
enjoyed by a popularly elected body.
But although there was, even in 1820-1833, no general agita-
tion against the Improvement Commissioners, there was, as we
have seen, at Manchester and elsewhere, widespread criticism
among Radicals and Reformers of the narrow basis of their con-
stitution, the extent of their powers of regulation and expenditure
and the absence of popular control. It was part of the intention
of those who framed the Bill of 1835 for the reform of the Muni-
cipal Corporations that the newly formed Town Councils should
346 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
take over all the powers and property of the various bodies
established under Local Acts within the several boroughs. Un-
fortunately, in the haste with which the Bill was prepared, and
under the influence of Lord Melbourne's desire to minimise the
opposition to the measure which he had to get through both
i louses of Parliament within a few weeks, the clause relating to
the bodies of Commissioners were drafted in permissive terms.
As enacted, it merely enabled the Commissioners voluntarily to
merge themselves in the reformed Corporations. It was in va
that Francis Place pointed out that such a clause would inevit-
ably prove quite inoperative. There was no time for a Parlia-
mentary fight with three hundred bodies of Commissioners,
which might all have claimed, like the Municipal Corporations,
to be heard in defence of their statutory rights. The result was
that the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, like the General
Highways Act of that year and the Poor Law Amendment Act
of 1834, left untouched the Commissioners under Local Acts,
whether for town improvements, turnpike roads or the adminis-
tration of poor relief .
The position of the Improvement Commissioners in the
Municipal Boroughs was, however, fatally undermined by the
sweeping measure of 1835. When it was realised that the new
Town Council, nominally charged with the " good government "
of the whole borough, was elected for the same area as the Com-
missioners, on what was, in nearly all cases, a far more popular
franchise, the movement in favour of the union of the two or
more public authorities within the same borough came gradually
to be irresistible. When the new Town Council set up its new
police force, there was no longer any reason for the maintenance
by the Commissioners of a separate Night Watch. There seemed
no reason for making separate assessments and levying separate
rates. Year by year, in one borough after another, the two
bodies were induced to agree to an amalgamation, usually under
the authority of the new Local Act which one or other consented
to seek. The process was accelerated by the pressure of the
Board of Health between 1848 and 1854. Whenever the Board
made an order making the Public Health Act applicable to any
town, it sought always to amalgamate the Improvement Com-
missioners with the Town Council. Whenever the Privy
Council issued a charter ol incorporation to a new borough
END OF THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS 347
the same merger was provided for. Within a quarter of a
century of the passing of the Municipal Corporations Act, nearly
all the bodies of Paving, Cleansing, Lighting, Watching, Street,
Lamp, Police or Improvement Commissioners in the municipal
boroughs to which the 1835 Act had applied, or in those newly
incorporated under it, had merged in the Town Council, 1 to which
they brought their own extensive statutory powers, in supple-
ment of the meagre provisions of the Municipal Corporations Act.
It was in this way, and not under the 1835 Act, that many
provincial boroughs started their Public Health work ; that
many more found themselves managing considerable depart-
ments of paving and cleansing the streets ; that the Manchester
Town Council became (already in 1842) the greatest municipal
purveyor of gas. It is, accordingly, the Improvement Com-
missioners, rather than the ancient chartered corporations, that
we must regard as the immediate predecessors and lineal ances-
tors, not of the titles and dignities, but of most of the activities
and statutory functions of the modern English municipality.
The hundred or so '' Paving Boards " and other similar
bodies in the Metropolitan Parishes outside the City of London,
which we have included in the common designation of Improve-
ment Commissioners, came to an end in a similar way. We find
them all merged either in the reorganised Vestries or in the
unions of parishes under District Boards, to which (in conjunction
with the Metropolitan Board of Works) the municipal govern-
ment of the area outside the City was confided by the Metropolis
Management Act of 1855 ; to be transformed by the Local
Government Act of 1888 and the London Government Act of
1899, respectively, into the London County Council and the
Metropolitan Borough Councils. 2
1 Nevertheless, there were, in 1884, still 44 " Improvement Act districts,"
under bodies of Trustees or Commissioners ; and even in 1893, 31 such districts,
outside municipal boroughs. (An Outline of Local Government and Local
Taxation, by R. S. Wright and H. Hobhouse, second edition, 1884, p. 22, and
third edition, 1906, p. 20.) They were then merged in the Urban District
Councils created under the Public Health Acts and the Local Government Act,
1894.
2 Leaving aside the analogous Harbour Commissioners, to which we have
already referred, the most important body of the nature of what we have
designated Improvement Commissioners that still existed in 1895 was the
Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London, which was, from the outset,
and has always continued to be, under Local Acts of 1667, 1671, 1691, 1708,
1737, 1744, 1761 and especially 1765, substantially nothing but a statutory
348 THE IMPROVEMENT COMMISSIONERS
Viewed from the standpoint of to-day, we cannot rate
very highly the actual achievements of the Improvement Com-
missioners themselves during the century or so of their opera-
tions. These three hundred or so separate authorities must,
indeed, be criticised for the very reasons that shielded them
from the denunciation of their contemporaries. The powers of
municipal government which they sought from Parliament were
inadequate to the task that lay before them ; and they usually
came to the end of their borrowing powers, and found them-
selves levying their maximum rate, before they had done more
than begin the " paving, cleansing, lighting, sewering, watching
and generally improving " of their town, which was assumed to
be their task. Of the magnitude and range of the work to be
done no contemporary had any idea. Such criticism of the
action of the Improvement Commissioners as we do find — notably
that which we have described at Manchester after 1824 — pro-
ceeded from a state of mind that we are to-day hardly able to
imagine. The doctrinaire Radical shopkeepers and little
property owners who objected on principle to street lighting, a
salaried police force, and the suppression of nuisances, had even
less conception of the gravity of the new problems of town life
than the Improvement Commissioners or than Parliament itself.
Their objections found no support among the mass of wage-
earners who, paying no rates, remained, stolidly indifferent to
the whole business. The shopkeepers and publicans were
committee of the Corporation of the City of London, and which we have
already referred to in The Manor and the Borough, 1908, vol. ii. pp. 577, 582,
010-612, 637, 640-641, 646. See ante, p. 58 ; A Practical Treatise on th Lam,
Customs, Usages and Regulations of the City and Port of London, by Alexander
1'ulling, 1842, 1844 and 1854, eh. xviii. ; the interesting Report of the Com-
missioners of Sewers of 15th November 1765 ; House of Commons Journals,
17th and 27th January 1766 and 23rd January 1771 ; the Reports of the
Municipal Corporations Commission, 1837, the Royal Commission on the
Corporation of London, 1854, and that upon London Government, 1899;
and the Modem History of the City of London, by C. Welch, 1896, pp. 17-18.
It was merged in the Corporation by the City of London Sewers Act, 61 and 62
Victoria c. 133 (1897).
It may be added that the Crown Estate Paving Commissioners, established
by the Acts 5 George IV. c. 100 and 14 and 15 Victoria c. 95, still continue,
and still levy on the Crown estate about Regent's Park a separate rate for
paving, watering, etc. The Conservators of Wimbledon and Putney Commons
Btill levy a " Commons Rate " under their Act of 1871. There are also more
than 60 "Garden Rates" levied in London by bodies of Trustees or Com-
missioners, under old Acts or legally authoritative "schemes" under modern
Acts, or under the Town Gardens Protection Act, 1863.
THEIR SINS OF OMISSION 349
equally unsuccessful in appealing to the wealthy manufacturers
or landowners, who saw the advantage of the Commissioners'
reforms, and continued to support them to the last, even against
the elected Town Councils. We must, in fact, conclude that
such work as was done by the Improvement Commissioners was
a clear gain to the community. Their sins were sins of omission.
It passes human imagination to conceive the state into which
the rapidly growing towns would have got if no such bodies had
been established. But it is sad to think how much disease and
premature death, how much human sorrow and demoralisation,
or even how much unnecessary expense, has resulted, in every
city of the land, from the extremely narrow range of the ideas of
those who, from the middle of the eighteenth century onward,
were responsible for providing the organisation by which alone
the requirements of the rapidly increasing urban population
could be met.
CHAPTER V
A CENTURY AND A HALF OF ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT l
THE OLD PRINCIPLES
With the present volume we complete our survey of English
Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Cor-
porations Act — so far, at least, as constitutional structure is
concerned. We now proceed to summarise in two concluding
chapters the outstanding characteristics of this period, whether
manifested in the decay of the old or in the evolution of new
principles of government.
We may first explain the significance of these particular
years. When we turned to the subject of Local Government,
nearly a quarter of a century ago, our object was to describe the
organisation and working of the existing local governing authori-
ties, with a view to discovering how they could be improved.
We realised from the outset that a merely statical investigation
of what was going on around us would reveal little or nothing
of the lasting conditions of disease and health in the social
organisations that we were considering. We knew that, in order
to find the causes of their imperfections and the directions in
which they could be improved, we had to study, not only their
present but also their past ; not merely what they were doing
but also how they had come to be doing it. Somewhat naively,
we accepted as our starting-point the beginning of the nineteenth
century. But after a year's work on the records, it became
apparent to us that the local institutions of the first quarter of
that century were either in the last stages of decay or in the
earliest years of infancy. We saw that it was impossible to
appreciate the drastic innovations of 1834-183G, and their sub-
sequent developments, without going much further back. After
350
POLICY OF NON-INTERVENTION 351
some reconnoitring of the seventeenth century, we decided that
the Revolution of 1689 ranked, in the evolution of English Local
Government, as the beginning of a distinct era which continued
until the Reform Bill of 1832.
The best way of recalling to the reader the extensive and
multifarious changes described in our volumes, will be first to
discover and analyse the main principles — the ideas that governed
men's minds, the traditional concepts still potent in constitutional
organisation — inherited in 1689 from previous centuries and
embodied in the local institutions of the eighteenth century.
We shall therefore describe in this chapter (i.) the " Obligation
to Serve," and to serve gratuitously in the discharge of local
public duties ; (ii.) Vocational Organisation as the very basis of
government ; (iii.) the principle of Self -Election or Co-option ;
(iv.) the Freehold Tenure of profitable office ; (v.) the conception
of property, and at the outset landed property, as an indispensable
qualification for, if not actually a title to, the exercise of authority ;
and, as explaining the absence of anything that could be called
a system of Local Government, and the utter lack of uniformity
or consistency, (vi.) the predominance of local customs and the
Common Law as the very basis of the whole. In the next chapter
we shall set forth the gradual evolution of a new set of principles
arising out of the circumstances and thought of the new age :
principles destined to become dominant in the Local Government
of the nineteenth century.
A Policy of N on- Intervention by the Central Government
At the outset of our analysis appears, not any ancient prin-
ciple, but a new policy, arising with dramatic suddenness out of
the Revolution of 1689. A summary end to " arbitrary inter-
ference " with " local liberties " was one of the most important
results of the dismissal of the Stuart dynasty. For more than a
hundred years from that date, King and Parliament adopted a
policy of indifference as to what the various local governing
authorities did or abstained from doing. The interference of
the Privy Council, and even that of the Courts of Law and the
Assize Judges, sank to a minimum. In contrast alike with the
centralised administration that was being built up, especially
as regards poor relief, between 1590 and 1640, and with the
352 THE OLD PRINCIPLES
arbitrary " regulating " of Municipal Corporations of 1683-1688.
the King's Ministers after 1689, it is scarcely too much to say,
deliberately abstained from any consideration of the Local
Authorities ; and hardly ever found themselves driven to come
to any decision on the subject of their activities or their powers.
The Justices of the Pea,ce, between the Revolution and the
Municipal Corporations Act, enjoyed, in their regulations, an
almost complete and unshackled autonomy. Unlike a modern
County Council making by elaws, -Quarter Sessions was under no
obligation to submit its orders for confirmation to the Home
Secretary or to any other authority. Moreover, the Justices
were, in their own Counties, not only law-makers, but, either
collectively or individually, themselves also the tribunal to adjudi-
cate on any breaches of their own regulations. Again, the Juries
of the Manor, of the Court of Sewers, of the Hundred and of
the County, were always " interpreting " the local customs, and*
restricting or extending the conception of public nuisances, active
or passive, according to contemporary needs, or new forms of
the behaviour of individual citizens and corporate bodies ; whilst
the inhabitants in Vestry assembled, or the little oligarchy of
Parish Officers, were incurring (and meeting out of the ancient
Church Rate) expenditure on all sorts of services according to
local decision, without any one having any practical power of
disallowance. As for the Municipal Corporations, they regarded
their corporate property, their markets, their tolls, their tines
and fees, as well as their exemptions and privileges, as outside
any jurisdiction other than their own. When, in the course of
the eighteenth century, it became necessary or convenient to
invoke Parliamentary authority for the enforcement of new
regulations, or the levying of new imposts, this usually took the
form, not of a statute of general application, but (as we have
described in the present volume) of literally thousands of separate
Local Acts. These peculiar and little studied emanations of
national law were not devised by the Government or by its
central departments, but were spontaneously initiated and
contrived by little groups of the principal inhabitants of parti-
cular areas ; they were debated and amended in the House of
Commons, not by committees of impartial persons, but mainly
by the representatives of the Boroughs and Counties concerned ;
and as we have described in the Introduction to this volume, it
THE ABSENCE OF SYSTEM 353
was not until the very end of the eighteenth century that the
" Lords' Chairman " began to insist on inserting clauses safe-
guarding what he considered to be the interests of the public at
large. Thus, the special epoch dealt with in our description
of the Parish and the County, the Manor and the Borough
and the Statutory Authorities for Special Purposes, is a
definitely bounded period, extending over more than a century
and a quarter, of something very like an anarchy of local
autonomy.
No System of Local Government
During the eighteenth century the anarchy of local autonomy
was heightened by the fact that there was nothing that could be
regarded, either in theory or practice, as a system of Local
Government. There was, as we have described in the foregoing
volumes, a confused network of local customs and the Common
Law, of canon law and royal decrees or charters, interspersed
with occasional and unsystematised Parliamentary statutes.
Out of this confused and largely unexplored network, there had
emerged four distinct organs of government : the Parish, the
County, the Manor and the Municipal Corporation — not to
mention the anomalous Commission of Sewers — to which was
added, in the course of the eighteenth century, a new type
described in the present volume — the Statutory Authority for
Special Purposes. These distinct organs of government are
found superimposed one on the top of the other, at different
periods of history, for different purposes, by different instruments
and with different sanctions. Alike in origins and in areas, in
structures and in powers, they are inextricably entangled one
with the other. What is common to them all is that not one of
them was, or claimed to be, a system of Local Government. If
any of the Dutch gentlemen who landed at Torbay with William
the Third had asked a Lord Lieutenant, a High Sheriff or a
Justice of the Peace to describe " the Local Government of
England," he would have met with a blank ignorance of any
such order of things. The Rulers of the County would have
thought of themselves not as Local Authorities at all, but as
the deputies of the King, with an obligation to provide what was
requisite for the King's soldiers, to hold the King's Courts, to
maintain the King's peace ; having a general commission to
2 a
354 THE OLD PRINCIPLES
govern their own County as they thought right, and especially to
supervise all other citizens in fulfilling their respective obliga-
tions. The peers and country gentlemen who consented to
spend some of their leisure, in and out of Parliament, in perform-
ing these tasks, would have been aware that the City of London
was wholly exempt from their control ; and that up and down
the land there existed many Cities, Boroughs, Franchises and
Liberties which successfully claimed to exclude this or that
particular Court or official jurisdiction. But these were mere
exceptions to the normal government exercised by the landed
gentry of the Kingdom. The suggestion that there existed any
kind of lawful autonomy in the fifteen thousand Parishes and
Townships would have seemed to the country gentleman, at the
end of the seventeenth century, an absurd and a dangerous
contention. The two or three hundred Municipal Corporations
would have accepted their status of exceptional privilege with
complacency. They would have cited in proof their diverse
Courts exercising jurisdiction over this or that area, entirely
independent of the County ; their infinitely varied constitutions,
derived indifferently from charters, statutes or immemorial
custom, and frequently amended by their own byelaws, without
intervention on the part of Parliament or the Government.
The Lord of the Manor, on the other hand, would have told the
curious enquirer that, as a landowner, he had, by immemorial
usage, Courts of his own ; that in these Courts his tenants were
compelled to appear ; and that he himself, or his steward, was
always anxious to agree with them on any matters of common
concern. He might have added that there were such things as
Juries of his tenants, with certain rights to give verdicts, to
declare the local customs and even to present him before his own
steward for failing to conform to these customs, or for permitting
the continuance on his property of any public nuisance. The
Parish Constable, Overseer or Surveyor of Highways, far from
feeling himself a member of a Local Authority, would have
complained that he was compelled to serve without payment in
an unpopular office, exacting from him much time and labour,
at the beck and call of any interfering 'Justice of the Peace.
Finally, the Churchwarden would have been puzzled to know
whether he belonged to a secular or to an ecclesiastical hierarchy ;
and how far he was compelled to obey, on the one hand the
THE OBLIGATION TO SERVE 355
archdeacon and " the Ordinary," or on the other, the little group
of " principal inhabitants " in Vestry assembled. But not one
of these personages would have regarded himself as forming
part of anything that could be called a system of Local Govern-
ment. He could hardly have conceived even of the existence
of any such system. The very term, Local Government, was not
in use before the middle of the nineteenth century. 1 Through-
out the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and right into the
nineteenth century, the greatest county personage or the humblest
parishioner stood on his personal status, whether that status was,
in the main, one of authority over other men, as in the case of
the County Justices, the Municipal Magistrates or the Lords of
Manors ; or, in the main, one of graduated subservience to
superiors within an hierarchy, secular or ecclesiastical, as in the
case of the Parish Constables, Overseers, Churchwardens, the
citizens called out on the service of Watch and Ward in the town
streets or the labourers summoned to Statute Duty on the
country roads.
The Obligation to Serve
It was, indeed, this principle of obligation to render public
service, a principle coming down from time immemorial, that
was, and remained far into the eighteenth century, the axle
round which revolved all old-established local institutions,
whether manorial or parochial, of the Borough or of the County.
The particular obligations might rest on local custom or on the
Common Law ; they might be embodied in grant or charter, in
general statute or, in later times, in a Local Act ; they might
attach to individuals or corporations, or be appurtenant to the
ownership of particular estates. But however these obligations
arose, they included, not merely a duty to obey, but also a direct
charge on the will to act. They involved not only personal
responsibility to a superior, but also such power over other
persons as was incidental to the due performance of the public
1 We find the phrase " local self-government " becoming current in the
second quarter of the nineteenth century, largely through its use by Von
Gneist and J. Toulmin Smith. From this, in the third quarter of the century,
seems to have sprung the phrase " local government." It is difficult to believe
that this cannot be found, here and there, at an earlier date ; but it was certainly
not until the middle of the nineteenth century that it came into common use.
We notice it in a leading article of the Times on 15th December 1856,
356 THE OLD PRINCIPLES
service. Thus, however men might differ in faculties and desires,
or in status and fortune, they were all under obligation to serve
in one way or another. It was, for instance, taken for granted
that every respectable male resident was under legal obligation
to undertake, without salary or other remuneration, one or other
of the customary or statutory offices of Manor, Parish or County. 1
Though, as we have explained, the m 
