And other matters which ultimately were to have great influence towards the solution of some of the worst of the health difficulties in London were coming into view, and assuming form and substance.
Tramways, with their facilities of traffic, were about to be started.
In 1869 three private Acts were passed, authorising the construction and working of tramway lines in the metropolis, and in the following year several more private Acts and “The Tramways Act, 1870,” which was a general measure. Its main object was to provide a simple, inexpensive, and uniform mode of proceeding in obtaining authority for the construction of tramways, and to give the local authorities the power of regulation and control.
In London the Metropolitan Board of Works was constituted the “local authority” under the Act; and that Board was empowered to apply for a Provisional Order itself to construct tramways, and lease them to other persons, and was given, with the approval of the Board of Trade, a compulsory power of purchase after a period of twenty-eight years on certain conditions.
And in 1870 another Act of the most far-reaching importance was passed, “The Elementary Education Act,” which prescribed the establishment of a School Board for London, and which in process of time would exercise vast influence towards a cleaner, brighter, healthier life than any hitherto within the reach of the masses of the population of London.
But though progress was being made in many ways, the progress had not affected infantile life.
“The dreary catalogue of human misery” given in the statistics of infantile mortality was as dreary as ever.
In every part of London those statistics were appalling.
In 1867, in the Whitecross Street District of St. Luke, no less than 64·4 per cent. of the mortality for the district consisted of deaths among children under five years of age. In 1868 it was close upon 61 per cent.
In Bethnal Green, in 1869–70, of 3,378 deaths, 1,900 were under five = 56·3 per cent.