[122] “Street” includes any highway (not being a turnpike road), and any public bridge (not being a county bridge), and any road, lane, footway, square, court, alley, or passage, whether a thoroughfare or not. (38 & 39 Vic. c. 55, s. 4.)
[123] The law apparently gives the Sanitary Authority power to fix names of streets against any premises they may choose, without first applying for or obtaining any consent from either the occupier or owner of such premises. (Vide 10 & 11 Vic. c. 34, s. 64.)
[124] If the premises have no existing number, these words can be left out.
CHAPTER XV.
BREAKING UP STREETS.
In nearly every city and town of the United Kingdom, except those where the gas and water undertakings are the property of the urban authority, the town surveyor is constantly annoyed by having some portions of his streets broken up and greatly damaged by the action of the gas or water companies of the district.
With regard to the lasting character of the damage caused to the street by this disturbance of its surface, I shall have something to say in this chapter, but it is first necessary to see what legal powers the companies have to break up the streets, and what powers the surveyor has to enforce the work being properly carried out.
It will be found that the sections bearing upon this point are almost precisely similar in their wording in the following Acts:
“The Gas Works Clauses Act 1847” (10 & 11 Vic. c. 15).