The Metropolitan Board of Works

From the 17^th century London spread beyond the original City boundary, and suburbs began to form that lay within the counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Essex and Kent. In those parts local governance was largely managed by the vestries of around 90 parishes, precincts and liberties, with no over-arching authority. There were numerous separate administrative areas and overlapping bodies in the urban area outside of the City. Those 300 bodies, with their 10,000 commissioners, were responsible for paving, lighting, drainage, and other municipal services. In the parish of St. Pancras alone there were at least 16 paving boards, each of which had to agree on any parish-wide improvements. At the same time London’s size, population and complexities steadily grew and by 1831 half a million people, or nine-tenths of the population of the entire metropolis, lived outside of the City. Without an overall governing body, new problems arose from a lack of adequate policing, sanitation, water-supply, healthcare, education, planning and social welfare.

There had been sewer commissions since the 16^th century, of which there were eight around London, but they were only responsible for the removal of surface water and not human waste. New organisations were gradually formed during the 19^th century to deal with London-wide issues. The various turnpike trusts within Middlesex, each responsible for the upkeep of sections of major roads, were amalgamated in 1826 to form the Metropolitan Roads Board and they started to lay out new highways. Three years later the Metropolitan Police came into existence, responsible for the urban area that surrounded, but did not include, the City. Their establishment thus created a boundary for the metropolis that did not otherwise exist for the administration of the greater urban area. The word ‘metropolis’ comes from ancient Greek but it was only around the time of the formation of the police force that the word came into general use to define London, and by the 1830s it was appearing on maps. As new bodies were formed, the powerful City of London maintained its independence from the surrounding suburbs, with its own separate police force and governance.

A cholera outbreak, which began in India and reached Rotherhithe in 1832, killed over 5,000 Londoners in the following months. It focused minds on the need to improve London’s infrastructure and the health of its population, particularly by providing adequate sewers. Prominent amongst campaigners was Edwin Chadwick. He headed the Poor Law Commission, created in 1834 to take on the work of poor relief nationally, and operating from offices in Somerset House. During an epidemic of typhus in 1837-38 Chadwick began to turn his attention to the decaying refuse and stinking sewage in parts of London that was thought to breed disease. His report formed the blueprint of future sanitary improvements and led to the national Inquiry into the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain report, published in 1842. Chadwick proposed the formation of a Crown-appointed commission for the whole of London that would administer drainage, water, street cleaning and paving. There was much opposition to the idea, however, from the established vestries and the City Corporation.

Instead, in 1847 the government created a Royal Commission to investigate how London’s health could be improved. Its recommendation was that the seven Sewer Commissions outside of the City of London be replaced by a single body. In 1848, the same year as yet another cholera epidemic in which 14,000 people died, the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers was created, merging together the previous local Courts of Sewers. A General Board of Health was also created for the entire country. The City introduced its own Sewers Act to lay down new bylaws for sanitation and provide an inspection staff. John Simon was appointed as Medical Officer of Health. Simon and his team set about cleaning up the City of London, ridding it of cesspools and ensuring efficient drainage. Eight hundred people died of cholera within the City during 1849, strengthening Simon’s hand in dealing with sewage issues within his area.

It was yet another cholera outbreak in 1853-1854 that finally forced the government to consider more effective methods to deal with civic matters. Over ten thousand people died in that outbreak, yet only 211 within the City where John Simon had been very effective in eliminating insanitary conditions. The General Board of Health was reorganised, with Sir Benjamin Hall, MP for Marylebone, most famous today as the man after whom Big Ben is name, as President. He had been one of those who had argued for local administration by vestries but after taking up his new position realized that London was administered by 300 different bodies, in some cases with multiple authorities in the same street. He therefore proposed the creation of a Board of Works for the capital to centralise much of the planning.

Under Hall’s plans local paving boards were to be abolished, yet he did not wish to entirely sweep away the idea of vestries. Instead, The Metropolis Local Management Act of 1855 reorganised administration of the metropolis outside the City by creating vestry boards in a modified form, based on individual or groups of parishes, along the lines of the Poor Law management. Smaller parishes were to be formed into district boards. Hall defined London according to the 36 metropolitan districts used in the 1851 census. The Boards had new powers of administration and responsibilities within their area such as health, street lighting and paving, to raise money from their ratepayers, and control their budgets.

At the same time, the 1855 Act created the Metropolitan Board of Works, which took over responsibility for London’s sewers as well as street planning and other improvements. Its governing board was to be made up of representatives of the vestries, district boards and the City of London.

Elections were held in the autumn of 1855 for members of the modified vestries and district boards. As before, they came to be dominated by tradesmen, publicans, magistrates and solicitors, with the exception of St. George’s, Hanover Square, which contained some aristocrats. The vestries and district boards then each returned members to the MBW, with two from each of larger vestries and one each from the small vestries and district boards. Three members came from the City of London. The first chairman of the MBW was John Thwaites from the Southwark and Greenwich vestries, a businessman, Baptist preacher and vestryman who had served on the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers. Until his death in 1870, ironically of cholera, the highly competent Thwaites was to continue in that role, presiding over the years of the MBW’s greatest achievements.

From its start, the main preoccupation of the MBW was the problem of London’s sewers. Other responsibilities at the outset were street improvements such as widening and straightening, and street naming and numbering of houses.

The MBW initially based itself in Greek Street, Soho in the offices of the Metropolitan Commissioners of Sewers. When it outgrew those premises it purchased and demolished Berkeley House at Spring Gardens, Charing Cross and created itself a new office building there, opening in 1861.

The MBW began with a small permanent staff of about fifty that included engineers, architects and other specialists who were amongst the finest of their generation. Others included clerks to oversee the collection of rates. The most significant early appointment by the MBW was Joseph Bazalgette as Chief Engineer. By that time, as Surveyor of the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers, he had already been working on plans for a new sewer system for the capital.

The MBW inherited the finances of the Metropolitan Sewer Commission, who had left hundreds of thousands of pounds in uncollected rates. It soon became clear that the very limited powers given to the MBW to raise finance were inadequate for it to carry out the projects that were required.

The most pressing task of the MBW was in dealing with the problems of drainage that had eluded the Sewer Commissions. London’s population was rapidly growing, and the increasing use of water closets produced a greater amount of wastewater. Sewage had for centuries been held in cesspools but in the mid-19^th century the cesspools were being replaced by sewers, which drained directly or indirectly into the Thames. The river was becoming ever more polluted. Human and industrial waste was flowing out on each tide, only to be washed back on the next incoming tide.

Bazalgette had inherited from the late Frank Foster, Engineer to the Sewer Commission, and City Engineer William Haywood, plans for a new intercepting sewer system. In simple terms, London sits in a valley formed by the Thames. Waste could flow downhill through sewers until it reaches intercepting sewers that continued the downhill journey eastwards beyond the confines of the metropolis.

Bazalgette adapted the plans to produce a comprehensive scheme for both sides of the Thames. There was, however, an extended period of debate about how far downriver the outflows should be located. Under the terms of the Metropolis Local Management Act the outflows would have to be beyond the metropolitan limits. Yet the further downstream, the higher the cost, and the penny-pinching vestrymen of the MBW were loath to spend too much money. In the meantime, pollution of the river continued.

The summer of 1858 was hot and dry and that is when the ‘Great Stink’ occurred. The stench from the Thames became so intolerable that Committee Rooms of the Houses of Parliament had to be abandoned. In just over two weeks the government of Benjamin Disraeli rushed through a Bill that gave the MBW the powers to borrow the necessary funds to create a suitable sewer system. It also allowed the MBW to make its own decisions without approval of a government minister.

Construction did not always go smoothly, with several of the contractors declaring bankruptcy during the process. Nevertheless, by mid-1861 much of the work had been completed. As work progressed, various external matters increased Bazalgette’s original estimated cost from £2,800,000 to £4,115,000. A formal opening was set for April 1865 when the Prince of Wales set in motion the pumping engines of the southern outfall at Crossness. The system was widely praised and judged to be a triumph. John Thwaites was knighted. At that point there was still work to do, but the completed network eventually stretched for over 82 miles, draining both sewage and rainwater.

One of the major accomplishments of the Metropolitan Board of Works was the embankment of the Thames through London, primarily to house the main intercepting sewer. Until that time, the river through the capital was lined on both sides by numerous individual wharves that had evolved over many centuries. The idea of creating embankments had been around for some time but there was opposition from wharfingers, and no public body to undertake the project. If an intercepting sewer was to be created for the north side of the Thames, along the side of the river was the best option for its location. The creation of a new embankment in which to house it was the obvious solution.

In 1860 a Select Committee of notable engineers and architects, chaired by Sir Joseph Paxton, considered a number of different submissions and concluded that the project should be undertaken by the MBW, to be financed by coal and wine duties. However, many questions still remained unanswered. The government therefore set up a Royal Commission, chaired by William Cubitt. They examined over fifty different plans and proposed that a new embankment should also carry a road between Blackfriars Bridge to Mansion House. After some debate, in 1862 the Embankment Act was passed. The MBW were then able to borrow funds to create the embankments against the estimated income from the coal and wine duties.

The initial plan was to create an embankment on the Westminster side of the Thames from Westminster to Waterloo Bridge that would carry a low-level intercepting sewer, together with a subway to carry gas mains, water pipes, and other facilities. Landing stairs and steamboat piers were included. A second section was from Waterloo Bridge to the end of Temple Gardens. Before work could begin, the Board had to negotiate compensation with numerous landowners.

As the embankments on the Westminster side of the river were being built, the District Railway Company was creating its new underground line between South Kensington and Tower Hill. That was largely possible by incorporating it within the MBW’s new embankment. The railway company had found it extremely expensive to compensate property owners along the Kensington to Westminster part of their route, however, which led to severe financial difficulties. It eventually took six years to construct that section of the Embankment due to the District Railway’s lack of funds. The Victoria Embankment was officially opened by the Prince of Wales in July 1870, with a host of dignitaries in attendance. It was thereafter considered to be the Board’s greatest achievement. The railway was finally completed in November 1871.

There had long been flooding in Southwark and Vauxhall during exceptionally high tides, so that was a particular focus in planning an embankment on that side of the river. There were strong objections from riparian owners, however, so the MBW were initially only given permission from the government’s First Commissioner of Works to create an embankment between Westminster Bridge and Vauxhall Bridge. At that same time, St. Thomas’s Hospital was being forced out of its home at London Bridge due to railway works. The MBW were able to sell it land to relocate to the southern side of Westminster Bridge, the proceeds of which helped pay for the new embankment. In May 1874 the Chelsea Embankment was formally opened by the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh. In recognition of the successful completion of the embankments, Sir James McGarel-Hogg, the second Chairman of the MBW, was awarded a KCB, and Joseph Bazalgette a knighthood.

Despite the creation of the Chelsea Embankment, there were stretches of that side of the river liable to flood during high tides and it was necessary for the MBW to put pressure on riverside property owners to create their own defences.

From the time of its creation in 1855 the MBW also became responsible for London’s 165 miles of existing sewers. In 1864 they began a programme of repairs, at an eventual cost of £750,000 over four years.

While designing the new parts of the sewers, Bazalgette had made careful calculations about the increase in London’s population and about rainfall. The system was created for a population of 3.5 million but by 1871 it had already exceeded that number and was still rapidly rising. As London grew in size and more was paved over, the system struggled to cope during periods of the heaviest rainfall. The Board eventually decided to create a series of storms sewers, completed in 1886 at a cost of £700,000.

There was continuous controversy regarding the siting of the outfalls of the sewer system at Crossness and Barking. As the population grew, an ever-greater amount of sewage was being dumped into the river from the outfalls. There were complaints from the Thames Conservators that it was silting up the river. The issue came to national prominence in September 1878 when the Princess Alice pleasure paddle steamer sank at that point, with the loss of hundreds of lives. The sewage in the river was widely blamed, probably inaccurately, for the large number of deaths. Initially the Board dug in its heals over the issue, which did itself no favours. Eventually it was forced to take action and introduced two sludge boats to carry the sewage further out into the Thames Estuary.

The population of London had doubled in size during the forty-year period between 1811 and 1851, with the creation of the railways bringing an irncreasing number of people into the capital. The metropolis, with its ancient road layout, was congested, and the Metropolis Local Management Act imposed on the MBW the task of developing a network of major roads to get traffic moving. Unlike the creation of the sewer system, the main obstacle in doing so was the acquisition of properties, the raising of the necessary finance to purchase expensive properties, and the re-distribution of residents. Each new scheme produced much opposition from local freeholders, leaseholders, and vestries.

The plan for the Embankment from Blackfriars to Mansion House included the creation of a new street but the City of London Corporation considered that to be their domain. The matter went to Parliament, settled in favour of the MBW, and it was they who created Queen Victoria Street. That involved the acquisition of over 500 separate properties at a cost of almost two million pounds.

Once the Victoria Embankment was opened for traffic it became clear that a road link from Charing Cross was necessary. That involved the acquisition of Northumberland House from the Duke of Northumberland, and its subsequent demolition, which took some years. In 1876 Northumberland Avenue opened for traffic.

Some of the earliest of the MBW’s road projects were: Stamford Street, parallel with the Thames at Southwark, connecting Borough High Street to Blackfriars Road; the short Garrick Street at Covent Garden, with a £15,000 contribution from the Duke of Bedford; Burdett Road, connecting Limehouse with Mile End; and Park Lane to relieve traffic congestion created by the creation of Pimlico, Belgravia, and Victoria station.

The Act that authorized the creation of Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue required the MBW to provide land for the re-housing of displaced working people. The development of these, as well as Whitechapel High Street and Commercial Street, swept away notorious slum housing but the requirement for rehousing those evicted made the process very slow and complicated.

The MBW also took control of the naming of streets, with at least 1,500 changed to reduce the duplication. The New Road had earlier been created during the mid-18^th century to form a bypass across the north of the built-up area of London between Marylebone and Islington. The MBW renamed it as Marylebone, Euston and Pentonville Roads along its length. Over 120,000 eccentric building numbers were also re-numbered throughout the capital.

Until the mid-19^th century, responsibility for fire-fighting in London was the responsibility of insurance companies, carried out by their London Fire Engine Establishment. Their prime interest was in saving insured property, mostly in the central districts, rather than lives. In 1861 the insurance companies faced claims of over two million pounds from the massive Tooley Street fire and they lobbied for a public body to henceforth take responsibility. In 1865 the government passed the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Act, transferring responsibility to the MBW.

The bridges across the Thames, other than the City of London’s London and Blackfriars Bridges, and the government’s Westminster Bridge, had been built as toll crossings by private companies. This combination resulted in many people taking a longer route to avoid paying tolls, as well as unnecessary traffic jams, particularly across London Bridge. The private bridges, particularly Waterloo, had not been the financial success their developers had anticipated and they were eager to sell up if the price was right. In 1866 Southwark Bridge was freed when the City of London purchased it for less than a third of what it had cost to build. A committee was created in 1869 consisting equally of the MBW and the City of London Corporation to free Kew, Kingston, Hampton Court, Staines Bridges.

It took until 1877 before an Act of Parliament authorised the MBW to borrow funds to acquire all the toll bridges within the metropolis, together with one at Deptford Creek. Battersea was made of timber and required to be completely rebuilt, as was Fulham Bridge, which was replaced by the more modern Putney Bridge. Waterloo and Hammersmith required major repairs.

There was a desperate need for crossings to the east of London Bridge and Joseph Bazalgette produced a plan for a bridge immediately downstream of the Tower of London, as well as two tunnels further downriver and a ferry. However, in the event the City of London’s Bridge House Estates had accumulated substantial funds, so it was they who created Tower Bridge, while the MBW proceeded with one tunnel between Blackwall and Greenwich.

A long-lasting benefit to London’s population, that continues today, is the MBW’s ability to acquire open spaces for public use. By the end of the MBW in 1888 it was managing over 2,600 acres of public parks and commons.

The commons, including Blackheath, Hackney, Tooting Bec, Peckham Rye, and Clapham, were largely purchased from lords of various manors but only after the matter of the lords’ rights had been determined by the courts. In 1870 Hampstead Heath was acquired from Sir Spencer Maryon Wilson, although Wilson retained 400 acres for housing development.

From the outset the Board considered a new park in North London – what became Finsbury Park – to be a priority and in 1863 116 acres were eventually purchased. Another was Southwark Park at Rotherhithe. In Central London the MBW acquired Leicester Square, with help from a City financier.

Despite much opposition from vestries and those who opposed centralisation of power within the capital, the Metropolitan Board of Works gradually acquired additional powers that allowed it to work far more effectively. In some cases, without any other body to undertake the work, new responsibilities were put upon the Board by the government. Over time these tasks included: the testing of gas supplies; checking the safety against fire of the more than 400 London theatres and music halls; to administer regulations against contagious diseases of animals; the licensing of dairies, cowsheds and slaughterhouses, and to control the storage of petroleum and other explosive substances.

Despite its obvious successes, the MBW only briefly achieved broad public esteem. A particular criticism was that the Board members were not directly elected. Many considered it guilty of jobbery, or even corruption, without producing evidence of such. From 1886 the Financial News newspaper began an investigation, and a series of articles, that finally uncovered corruption by two members of MBW staff. In particular, a scheme was uncovered regarding the Old Pavillion Music Hall site at Piccadilly Circus. It had been acquired by the MBW in 1879 for the laying-out of Shaftesbury Avenue but temporarily leased to a music hall proprietor. However, secret payments were made to the Chief Valuer of the MBW and the Assistant Surveyor, as well as profits from the sale of a public house on the site. Initially, the Board dragged its heals in taking action but a Royal Commission was held, which found much additional wrong-doing, and damning evidence against two long-standing Board members who had used their positions for personal gain, and other MBW employees. On the whole, though, the Commission found no evidence of wholesale corruption.

Despite its shortcomings, the MBW laid much of the groundwork for future improvements to London for which the London County Council was later able to take credit. The MBW was part of a transitional stage in the governance of London, from the extreme localization of the numerous vestries, to the centralisation of the 20^th century. When the MBW was established in 1855, its most urgent priority was building a new sewer system. Over time, the government assigned it many additional responsibilities. By the 1880s it was undertaking numerous activities that would be expected of a municipal government, but without either the organisation or power of such a body.

The idea of a County of London, managed by a body whose members were elected by ratepayers, was first proposed in the 1866 Ayrton Committee report. Yet London had expanded over the centuries by absorbing surrounding villages, which each clung to their parish administration. The opposition to centralisation of London government was too entrenched for change to take place. There was little interest from MPs in reform in London, and the City of London continually opposed any change to their independence, protected by ancient charters.

As time moved on, and the complexities of London-wide issues became more apparent, there was an increasing number of those who called for some form of central government for the capital. A Private Member’s Bill brought in 1880 by J.F.B. Firth, MP for Chelsea, only failed because it was squeezed out by other Parliamentary business. The London Municipal Reform Leage was formed in 1881, with Firth as chairman, Other distinguished men joined the movement in the following years. During the early 1880s there was much debate and various solutions proposed.

In 1888 the MP and President of the Local Government Board, Charles Thomson Ritchie (later Lord Ritchie of Dundee), introduced the Local Government Act, which introduced county councils in England and Wales and making ten of the largest cities into counties. Councils were to consist of both directly elected councilors and others selected by the councillors. The County of London was thus created, based on the area covered by the MBW, absorbing parts of Middlesex, Essex, Kent and Surrey. The City of London largely remained independent.

From the beginning the newly-formed London County Council took on the former responsibilities of the MBW. The county councils were to begin functioning from April 1899. In its final weeks the MBW created as many difficulties as possible for its successor, loading it with financial obligations. The newly elected LCC discovered that MBW staff were planning to award contracts for the new Blackwall Tunnel prior to that body’s dissolution and therefore persuaded the government to have the MBW closed two weeks early. After the many great successes of its early years, and having done much to modernize the metropolis, it was an ignominious end to the Metropolitan Board of Works. Despite their expectations, almost none of the Board members of the MBW were elected to the new London County Council. The LCC initially set themselves up in the former MBW offices at Spring Gardens.