Volume 1

Second report.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on the State of Large Towns.
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Second report. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    32/518 (page 20)
    Highway Act. Inconvenience of annual elections of officers. General want of legislative provi- sion for drainage, Limited objects of the earlier local Improve- ment Acts. 20 Second Report. and of individuals.* The annual election of the executive officers greatly in- creases the difficulty of carrying out any systematic plan for drainage. All the surveyors and other officers retire fiom office at the end of each year: and, although re-eligible, aie liable to be superseded by an entirely new set of officers, who, unacquainted with their duties, and the objects contemplated by their predecessors, may suspend improvements in progress, prevent the execution of many, or originate others in like manner to be superseded. This has been found to opeiate most prejudicially, and necessarily deters the existing officers from commencing works, which, owing to the limited sums annually applicable to these objects, can only be carried to perfection by a close adherence to a well-considered plan during a series of years.f The most serious deficiencies in drainage are found to exist , in those towns which have advanced within a brief period lrom the condition of villages, chiefly the seats of the pottery and iron manufactures in Staffordshire, and the mining dis- tricts in South Wales, Monmouthshire, and the north of England. As an example of this description of towns, Merthyr Tydvil, at present containing above 37,000 inhabitants, pre- sents the most lamentable instance of the total absence of all drainage.^ The rapidly increasing suburbs of large towns which are without the municipal boundary, or to which the jurisdic- tion of a local Act does not extend, present similar examples of neglect, and strongly exhibit the necessity of the establish- ment of an efficient local authority for such purposes. In the examination of those local Acts which have been transmitted to us from several towns, we find that most of those of early date do not contain any provisions whatever for the drainage either of streets or houses ; such towns are in the condition of the class to which we have above adverted, and, if drained at all, are subject only to the inadequate pro- visions of the Highway Act. The objects provided for in these local Acts are generally the paving, lighting, cleansing, and frequently the watching, of the respective towns; and the * Evidence of Mr. Dean, First Report, vol. ii. p. 415. t Communication from Board of Surveyors of Bradford, Yorkshire, Second Report, vol. ii. J Report on Merthyr Tydvil, Second Report, vol, i.