Gentlemen,
A “Wellwisher,” certainly not to the Town of Dudley, has thought proper to insult you by the publication of a scurrilous Handbill, reflecting upon the Gentlemen retiring during the present year from office in your Local Board of Health. A more disgraceful production, and one more calculated to serve purely party purposes at the expense of truth, it has seldom been my lot to read. The Gentlemen there alluded to have exercised no deception—have been guilty of no trickery. They have made no professions which have not been faithfully carried out in practice. As to recklessness and extravagance compare their amount of Assessment and Rates with those of the Gentlemen “Wellwisher” so magniloquently recommends to your notice; WHILST THE FORMER REPRESENT PROPERTY PAYING UPWARDS OF £650 PER RATE, THE LATTER, OR MR. BADGER’S NOMINEES, PAY ONLY £57—the best answer to any assertion as to their expending so much money of their own for the mere pleasure of spending yours.
“Wellwisher” then appeals to the Ratepayers of Freebodies, Netherton, Woodside, and Holly Hall, evidently wishing to excite a hostile feeling between the Ratepayers of the districts and the Town itself. He asks “what has been done to our streets and thoroughfares?” Why, kept in as good repair and as well attended to as during the supremacy of his friends upon the old Highway Board; but doubtless “Wellwisher” wishes sufficiently well to the Tradesmen and “Shopkeepers” as to desire them not only to keep in repair the “streets, roads, and thoroughfares,” but also to make them, for the benefit of those who have sold and bought land at a great profit, and built houses in these localities, a thing always refused by the Highway Board as well as the Board of Health.
Beyond this, why does not “Wellwisher” tell you what his immaculate saving friends are endeavouring to do at the present moment, viz.—to throw the expenses of the repairs of the roads generally upon the rates, and which if effected will go far to double the payments upon the Town itself. This has already in part been done,—the Turnpike Commissioners have refused to repair (which has always before been done by them) that part of the street leading to Wolverhampton, situate between St. James’s Church and the Turnpike Gate, and without any notice having been given to the Board or their Surveyor, consequently this part of your streets has not been attended to or cleansed for many weeks. If it be not for mere “deception and trickery,” why does “Wellwisher” wish you to suppose that the Rates levied by the Local Board of Health are something new, and that without its establishment such payments would not have been required, whilst it admits of easy proof that the Rates paid by you during the past three years, under the management of the Board, have been considerably less than those formerly levied by the Town Commissioners and Highway Board.
As to the salaries paid to the various officers, why does not “Wellwisher” [?] go back to the palmy days of the old Town Act Commissioners and Highway Board, and tell us of the payments made in secret in those times? why does he not refer to the appointment of the salary of the Clerk to the Guardians, which was fixed, in spite of the Poor Law Board, at a higher amount than they thought necessary? why does he not refer to the job as to the appointment of the Relieving Officer as Master of the Dudley Workhouse?—because, forsooth, he happened to be a relative of one of those who prates most and pays least. “The labourer is worthy of his hire,” but if their salaries be too high, let their work be ascertained and paid for accordingly; but far better a good round sum at once, which is known to all, than allow an officer to eke it out by summonses and expenses, obtained from poor people before the magistrates.
He talks about sewerage, and the probability of its being carried into effect, estimating its amount at an extravagant rate. Will “Wellwisher” have the hardihood to assert that drainage is not wanted, when it is a well-known fact that, with great natural facilities, Dudley is one of the worst seweraged towns in the whole kingdom; that there is not a drain in any street sufficient to take away the water from the various cellars and lower parts of the houses; and to this fact alone is it to be attributed its great and extraordinary mortality, the average duration of life here being only 19 years: or would he rather that these things should exist than that any attempt should be made to improve them. “Wellwisher” then pathetically alludes to the Poor Man’s Pigs, very probably not only having a great sympathy for them, but also for the mire in which they wallow; but will those whose feelings he wishes to excite, believe that very many of his professing friends actually signed a memorial to the Board, calling strongly for the removal of Pigs from the entire of the Town District, and which was objected to by some of those he so harshly anathematizes. Doubtless, too, he approves of some of those high in authority keeping pigs in such a condition that the filth from their styes should drain into his neighbour’s sitting or bed room. “Wellwisher” next endeavours to enlist the sympathies of others by allusion to the Rating of Tenements’ Act, falsely asserting that those who were in favour of its introduction were themselves exempt from any effect of its operation. “Let the galled jade wince!” Its promoters supported it from just and proper motives, and not from the wish that their smaller dwellings should be drained and cleansed at the expense of other people.
FELLOW RATEPAYERS.—“Wellwisher’s” publication is nothing more than an impudent attempt to set Town against Country, and Country against Town, in order to relieve the Country part of the District of their fair share of the Rates at the expense of the heavily taxed Ratepayers of the Town. It is a disgraceful attack upon individuals who have devoted much valuable time to serve the Town, and who had the “unblushing effrontery” to endeavour to do right,—who have not sought either to do their fellow ratepayers “Brown,” or “Badger” them, but to act independently and faithfully for their best interests, and which time alone will fully prove. If you still wish to have men to represent you, who are disposed to continue to act thus, do not be dictated to by Mr. Badger, but Vote for
R. SMITH, ESQ.
S. D. FEREDAY, ESQ.
REV. DR. BROWNE.