As the non-City and out-districts became more thickly peopled, and streets and houses increased in number, the inconvenience of there being practically no local government at all made itself felt.
In some cases, the owners of the estates which were being so rapidly absorbed into London and being built upon, applied to Parliament for powers to regulate those estates.
In other cases, persons with interests in a special locality associated themselves together and obtained a private Act of Parliament giving them authority, under the name of Commissioners or Trustees, to tax and in a very limited way to govern a particular district or group of streets forming part of a parish. Thus it happened that a large number of petty bodies of all sorts and kinds came into existence. Any district, however small, was suffered to obtain a local Act of Parliament for the purpose of managing some of its affairs, and this, too, without any reference to the interests of the immediate neighbours, or of the metropolis as a whole. Most of the limited and somewhat primitive powers possessed by them were derived from an Act passed in 1817,[6] and related to the paving of streets and the prevention of nuisances therein. Some of these bodies were authorised to appoint surveyors or inspectors; also “scavengers, rakers, or cleaners” to carry away filth from streets and houses, but the exercise of such powers was, of course, purely optional. Indeed, there were scarcely any two parishes in London governed alike.
What the exact number of these various petty authorities was is unknown. 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.[7]
In Westminster:—
“The Court of Burgesses and the Vestry retained general jurisdiction over the whole parish for certain purposes; but the numerous local Acts so effectually subdivided the control and distributed it among boards, commissioners, trustees, committees, and other independent bodies, that uniformity, efficiency, and economy in local administration had become impossible.”[8]
There were authorities exclusively for paving; authorities for street improvements; authorities for lighting; even authorities for a bridge across the river. In the course of years, several hundred such bodies had been created, without any relation one to the other, and without any central controlling authority, good, bad, or indifferent, by as many Acts of Parliament. They were mostly self-elected, or elected for life, or both; and were wholly irresponsible to the ratepayers, or indeed to any one else; nor were their proceedings in any way open to the public. Many of them had large staffs of well paid officials; and there were perpetual conflicts of jurisdiction between them, and an absolute want of anything approaching to municipal administration.
It has been roughly stated—roughly because there are no reliable figures—that there were about three hundred such bodies in London—“jostling, jarring, unscientific, cumbrous, and costly”—the very nature of many of them being “as little known to the rest of the community as that of the powers of darkness.”
Add to these numerous, clashing, and incompetent authorities, various great public companies or corporations—the water companies, and gas companies, and dock companies, each with its own special rights—which were far more favourably and generously regarded by Parliament than were the rights of the public, and one has fairly enumerated the local governing bodies then existing in London.
In fact, in no parish of the great metropolis of London was there a local authority possessed of powers to deal in its own area with the multitudinous affairs affecting the health and well-being of the people.