A new electorate on almost the widest basis was created, all persons, male or female, on the Parliamentary or County Council Register, including lodgers and service voters, and married women, who were themselves tenants of property, being made parochial electors; and the Vestry was to be elected under the provisions of the Ballot Act of 1872.
Thus the scandals hitherto associated with Vestry elections were for the future obviated, and greater publicity—that safeguard of all public bodies—was assured.
Additional powers were also obtainable under the Act by the Vestries on application to the Local Government Board, who could transfer to the Vestry the powers and properties of the Library Commissioners, the Baths Commissioners, and the Burial Board; the power of appointing the Overseers of the Poor, and some other powers and duties of more or less importance, possessed or possessable by Parish Councils. The elections were held on December 15, 1894.
The new Vestries, however, did not mend the ways of their predecessors as regarded “inspection.”
Of Bethnal Green the Chief Sanitary Inspector said (1897): “With the existing staff (five Inspectors) and having regard to other work, it would take five years to visit all the houses in the parish—about 17,000.”
The Medical Officer of Health for Kensington wrote (1898): “The staff is quite inadequate for the discharge of the duties devolving upon your Vestry as Sanitary Authority.”
And the Medical Officer of Health for Hammersmith wrote in 1899: “The house-to-house inspection of the district is now nearly completed, and has taken six years to accomplish. The result of the inspection is in the highest degree satisfactory … nevertheless it cannot be contended that inspecting the district once in six years is properly carrying out the 1st Section of the Public Health (London) Act, 1891.”
A series of investigations was made by the Medical Officer of Health of the London County Council, or by his assistant, into the sanitary condition of various parishes or districts, and an instructive light thrown upon the administration of their affairs by their respective local governing authorities.
Almost uniformly, so far as they were concerned, it was found that bye-laws as to houses let in lodgings were not enforced, and no, or practically no inspection of workshops, of which there were thousands, nor of “outworkers” had been carried out, and that the sanitary staff was quite inadequate for the work.