“The constitution of the governing bodies in these areas shall be practically identical with the constitution which our great municipal boroughs already possess….
“We propose that there should be mayor, councillors, and aldermen.
“As regards their powers—the Vestries already possess (except as to police) the great urban powers possessed by other municipalities. Certain powers agreed upon between the Vestries and the London County Council at certain recent conferences will be added, and there would be transferred to them the powers relating to baths and wash-houses, libraries, and burial boards.”
“On an appointed day every elective Vestry and District Board in the County of London is to cease to exist. He hoped the plan would come into operation in November, 1900.”
The Bill became an Act—“The London Government Act”—in 1899.
The new municipal boroughs numbered twenty-nine—“the City of London” and twenty-eight others; sixteen of them consisting of single parishes, and the remaining twelve of several amalgamated parishes.
A few extra duties were cast upon them. Among them the duty of enforcing within their borough the bye-laws and regulations with respect to dairies and milk, slaughter-houses, and offensive businesses; and in some respects their powers were enlarged, the principal addition being the power to adopt and use the provisions of Part III. of the Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1890, within their borough.
All preparations for the change were completed by the autumn of 1899; the new Municipal Councils were elected on the 4th of November, the forty-three Vestries and District Boards ceased to exist, and London entered upon a new stage of her career.
Here, at the close of 1900, the Vestries and the District Boards of London came to their decreed end, and disappeared from the scene of London civic life. That end was not regretted by the general public, whose opinion may be gauged from the fact that the name “Vestry” had become almost synonymous with incapacity, mismanagement, neglect, sometimes even of graver transgressions, though in later years the Vestries did something towards removing from themselves that reproach.
They certainly had done much useful work, and even at the outset of their existence were a great improvement upon their predecessors. They had found their parishes and districts forty-five years previously in the state described in the first and second chapters of this work—a chaos of filth, a slough of insanitation and deadly disease, and the great mass of the people living in misery indescribable—and the task before them was one which might have daunted the stoutest heart.