Metropolitan Board of Works
Metropolitan Board of Works | |
---|---|
Unicameral | |
Term limits | Three years[1] |
History | |
Founded | 1 January 1856 |
Disbanded | March 1889 |
Preceded by | |
Succeeded by | London County Council, the (District of the) Metropolis being renamed the County of London |
Leadership | |
Chairman |
|
Structure | |
Seats |
|
Committees |
|
Length of term | Three years, with one third of board appointed every year |
Elections | |
Indirect election | |
Meeting place | |
Spring Gardens (1859–1889) |
The Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) was the upper tier of local government for London between 1856 and 1889, primarily responsible for upgrading infrastructure. It also had a parks and open spaces committee which set aside and opened up several landmark parks. The metropolis, which the board served, included substantial parts of Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent throughout the 33 years leading up to the advent of county councils. This urban zone lay around the medieval-sized City of London but plans to enact a similar body in 1837 failed. Parliament finally passed the Metropolis Management Act 1855 which dissolved a short-lived building office and a sewers commission and made the Board effective as of December that year. The board endured until it was succeeded by London County Council, as its directly elected, direct successor, in March 1889.
Its principal responsibility was to provide infrastructure to cope with the rapid growth of the metropolis, which it accomplished with varying degrees of success. The MBW was co-opted from boards, districts of
Background
The growth of the city around the commercial City of London was continuing apace; as the British Empire grew so the London Docks had grown in trade, population sharply grew and demand for housing rose as did the building of homes. Half of the population of the two of the three counties that adjoined that medieval-walled city definition were within a few miles of it. However the government of this metropolis was chaotic, with over 100 key authorities having statutory or customary powers and much overlapping territory. Specifically, providing a rate-paid service or capital improvement in a given place sometimes needed the co-ordination or consent of many of these.
In 1835 elected
In 1837 an attempt was made to set up an elected authority covering the whole of the metropolis; however, the wealthier districts of Marylebone and Westminster resisted this, as some of their own local powers and low rates would have been lost. They defeated the motion. In 1854 the Royal Commission on the Corporation of the City of London proposed to divide an urban area around the City of London into seven boroughs, each represented on a Metropolitan Board of Works. This proposal was abandoned, but the next year the board of works was set up to cover all this.
Creation
To empower this body to coordinate work to plan and build infrastructure of the metropolis, Parliament passed the
It was not to be a directly elected body, but instead to consist of members nominated by the vestries who were the principal local authorities. The larger vestries had two members and the City of London had three. A few vestries were for tiny parishes who co-convened into a district board for nominating members to the MBW. There were 45 members, who would then elect a Chairman who was to become a member ex officio. The first nominations took place in December and the Board held its first preliminary meeting on 22 December 1855 where John Thwaites was elected as chairman. The board formally came into being on 1 January 1856 when it took over the powers, duties and liabilities of the Commission of Sewers and the Buildings Office.
Activities
Sewage
A major problem was sewage: most of London's waste was allowed to flow into the
Streets and bridges
Activities included slum clearance and making new streets to relieve traffic congestion. The most important streets built were Charing Cross Road, Garrick Street, Southwark Street and Northumberland and Shaftesbury Avenues.
From 1869 the MBW bought all the private bridges across its section of the Tideway (Thames) and freed them of tolls. It also rebuilt Putney, Battersea, Waterloo and Hammersmith Bridges.
- Commons-tabled plans for a bridge serving the role of Tower Bridge
The board wanted to build a new bridge east of
Embankment
The Board funded the tree-studded surface in the three sections of its contractor-designer Joseph Bazalgette's Thames Embankment from 1864.
Fire brigade
From 1865 the MBW became responsible for administering the Metropolitan Fire Brigade.[5] Architects employed by the MBW who specialised in fire stations included Robert Pearsall, responsible for Fulham Fire Station[6] and Woolwich Fire Station.
Parks and open spaces
In 1856 the MBW obtained an amending act of parliament giving them the power to provide "parks, pleasure-grounds and open spaces", subject to parliamentary approval. Among the parks and open spaces acquired or laid by the board were:[7]
- Finsbury Park (acquired 1857, formally opened 1869)
- Southwark Park (acquired 1864, opened 1869)
- Victoria Embankment Gardens (opened in 1870)
- Leicester Square (opened in 1874)
- Wormwood Scrubs (vested in the MBW in 1879)
- Hampstead Heath (acquired in 1886)
- Bethnal Green Museum (taken over from the Office of Worksin 1887)
- Clapham Common (transferred to the board's ownership in 1887)
- Wandsworth Common (duties of the conservators transferred to the board in 1887)
- Ravenscourt Park in 1888 and Clissold Park in 1889
- Dulwich Park laid out by the MBW but opened by the successor London County Council in 1890.
Under the
Organisation
The MBW at first had its meetings in the Guildhall of the City of London and its headquarters at Greek Street in
Scandals
Few ratepayers and construction contractors thought MBW were transparently rewarded or that their property deals and tendering amounted to fair price and competition. Its status as a
The knub of the scandal arose from the MBW's purchase of the old Pavilion music hall in Piccadilly Circus in 1879, when the site was thought necessary for the construction of Shaftesbury Avenue. As the street was still in the early stage, the site was leased to music hall proprietor R.E. Villiers. In addition to this, Villiers paid a small sub rosa amount to F.W. Goddard, who was Chief Valuer for the Board, for favourable treatment.
In 1883 Villiers met with Goddard and Thomas James Robertson (MBW Assistant Surveyor) to ensure that the remainder of the site was granted to him for a new Pavilion. They agreed to help him, in return for one corner becoming a public house under the landlordship of W.W. Grey who was the brother of Robertson, though this was not apparent.
In November 1884 Robertson told Villiers that the time had come to make a formal offer to the MBW to rent the new site. Villiers offered £2,700 ground rent per year. The Board instructed its superintending architect,
Subsidiary corruption
For years, vague hints had been made that the Board tended to encourage those applying for leases to employ members of the Board as architects. In particular,
At lowest level, MBW's Assistant Architect, John Hebb, had responsibility for inspecting theatres for safety. He began to write to the managers of theatres with upcoming inspections to suggest that they might want to send him free tickets. Given the power of the board to close theatres, most complied. However, displeased by the inspections themselves, and by the attempt to extract gifts, the managers tended to send Hebb tickets for seats that were at the back of the house or hidden behind a pillar.
Royal Commission
The Goddard-Robertson scandal was revealed by a series of articles in the
The commission was headed by Lord Herschell and found the main allegations of the Financial News to have been correct, and indeed understated. Some other scandals were also discovered including the corruption of architects who were members of the Board. However, the Commission repudiated the view of critics that corruption was endemic in the Board.
While the Royal Commission was still preparing its hearings, the
Abolition
The Metropolitan Board of Works was abolished by the Local Government Act 1888; and the London County Council had been elected on 21 January 1889, to assume its new powers on 1 April. With the MBW a lame duck, its last weeks were its most inglorious period. The LCC were due to assume financial responsibility; and the MBW began to award large pensions to the retiring officers and large salaries to those who would transfer. The MBW then decided to allow the Samaritan Hospital in Marylebone to use an additional 12 feet of pavement, which the LCC opposed. The LCC wrote to the MBW asking it not to take the decision; the MBW did not reply and gave the permission.
Finally, the MBW received the tenders for the Blackwall Tunnel and decided to take a decision to award the contract at its final meeting. The LCC again wrote asking the MBW to leave the decision to them. The Chairman of the MBW replied (18 March 1889) that it intended to continue. At this the LCC decided to appeal to the government which exercised its power to abolish the MBW and bring the LCC into existence on 21 March 1889.
The magazine
The MBW's headquarters by
Chairmen
- Sir John Thwaites 1855–1870
- James Macnaghten Hogg1870–1889
See also
References
- ^ ISBN 9780485113877.
- ^ "Division i. London comprising the districts or poor law unions, sub-districts, parishes and places, included within the limits of the Metropolis, as defined in the present London weekly tables of mortality being parts of the counties of Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent". HISTPOP.ORG. pp. Census > 1851 > Great Britain > Population tables I, Vol. I. England and Wales. Divisions I–VII, 1851. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
- ^ "Metropolitan Local Management, House of Commons Debates 16 March 1855 vol 137 cc699-729". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). 16 March 1855. Retrieved 25 January 2014.
- ISBN 978-9-814-43536-9.
- ^ London Fire Brigade | History, key dates (Our history) Archived 18 June 2008 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Historic England. "FULHAM FIRE STATION, 685, FULHAM ROAD (1079761)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 23 December 2013.
- . London: Eliot Stock.
Bibliography
- 'Professionalism, Patronage and Public Service in Victorian London: The Staff of the Metropolitan Board of Works, 1856–1889' by Gloria Clifton (Athlone Press, London, 1992)
- 'The Government of Victorian London, 1855–1889: The Metropolitan Board of Works, the Vestries, and the City Corporation' by David Owen (Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1982)
Architectural plans for the Spring Gardens building (CRES 35/2420 and CRES 35/2421) can be found at The National Archives.