THE

LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL: What it Is and what it Does.*

THE Administrative County of London, with its fifty-eight Parliamentary constituencies, measures 16 miles in extreme length (east and west), from Plumstead to Bedford Park, and 11 miles in extreme breadth (north and south), from Stamford Hill to Anerley. This area comprises, including the "City" proper, 75,490 acres, or nearly 119 square miles (being three-quarters the size of the Isle of Wight or the county of Rutland). The County had in 1891, 549,283 inhabited houses, containing 4,211,743 persons, or 840,000 families, being 14:52 per cent. of the population of England and Wales; 56 to the acre; 35,392 to the square mile; and 7-8 to each house.

The London County Council is constituted under the Local Government Act, 1888 (England and Wales). It inherited the powers, duties and liabilities of the Metropolitan Board of Works and the County Justices. The Council consists of 118 Elected Councillors, who hold office for three years; and of nineteen Aldermen, chosen by the Council, who hold office for six years, one-half retiring every three years. Of the Councillors, four are elected by the City of London, while the remaining 57 electoral divisions of the metropolis elect two members each. The University of London is not represented, and the boroughs of West Ham, Croydon and Richmond are not included in the County of London. County electors consist of the householders, men or women, whose names are on the printed register. Lodgers, service-occupiers and freeholders cannot vote at a County Council election. Women occupiers, who are not directly rated, should take special care to send in claims by August 25th each year, if their names are not included in the list published

* Further information as to the work of the London County Council may be found in the Annual Address of the Chairman, published with the Annual Report of the Council. It can be obtained from Messrs. P. S. King & Co., 12 King-street, Westminster, price Is. The London Reform Union has issued as penny pamphlets Sidney Webb's article on "The Work of the London County Council," which appeared in the Contemporary Review for January, 1895, and the series of articles in London by Robert Donald, under the title of "Six Years' Service of the People." The Eighty Club pamphlet, "The Reform of London," price id., and "The London Programme," price Is., published by Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein & Co., and both by Sidney Webb, should also be consulted.

on the 1st of that month. Candidates must be registered as County electors in London, but not necessarily in the constituency for which they are to stand. Aldermen must possess the qualifications required of Councillors.

The Council elects its own Chairman, Vice-Chairman, and DeputyChairman. The last receives a salary of £1,500, and is the official head of the clerical establishment.

The detailed work of the Council devolves on twenty-one Committees, five Special Committees, and the Technical Education Board. The Committees vary in size from five to fifty members. The Council also elects representatives on the Standing Joint Committee of the Quarter Sessions and the London County Council, and on the Thames and Lea Conservancy Boards. The following is a list of the Committees (1) Asylums, (2) Bridges, (3) Building Act, (4) Corporate Property, (5) Establishment, (6) Finance, (7) Fire Brigade, (8) General Purposes, (9) Highways, (10) Improvements, (11) Industrial and Reformatory Schools, (12) Local Government and Taxation, (13) Main Drainage, (14) Parks and Open Spaces, (15) Parliamentary, (16) Public Control, (17) Public Health and Housing, (18) Stores, (19) Theatres and Music Halls, (20) Water, (21) Works. The Special Committees. are two Statutory Committees for Assessment Appeals, and County Rates, and two for Small Holdings, Fire Insurance, and the Joint Committee on Coroners' Courts and Mortuaries.

The Council has nothing to do with paving, cleansing, or lighting the streets; does not control the water-works, gas-works, markets, and police; is almost powerless in valuation and assessment; does not collect its own rates; is neither the sanitary nor the burial authority; is inadequately represented on the Thames and Lea Conservancy Boards; and cannot even prepare or supervise the registration of the voters who elect it.

Notwithstanding this degradation of the chief Municipality of the Kingdom below the meanest provincial borough incorporated under the Municipal Corporations Act, 1835, the powers and duties of the London County Council are extremely multifarious, and touch the lives of London's citizens from the cradle to the grave. It has to administer either wholly or in part, or supervise the administration of a large number of general and special Acts of Parliament. Amongst the more important are:

The Building Act, 1894.

The Factory and Workshop Act, 1891.

The Electric Lighting Acts and Orders.

The Railway and Canal Traffic Act, 1888.

The Weights and Measures Acts, 1878 and 1889.
The Bread Act.

The Explosives Act, 1875.

The Public Health (London) Act, 1891.

The Petroleum Acts.

The Infant Life Protection Act.

The Shop Hours Act, 1892.

The Contagious Diseases (Animals) Acts.

The Artizans' and Laborers' Dwellings Improvements Act, 1875. The Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1890.

The Technical Instruction Acts, 1889 and 1891.

The work of the Council may be conveniently considered under the following general heads :

I. THE COUNCIL AND THE HEALTH OF

LONDON.

The public health of London is affected by the powers of the Council in the provision of more room for the people to live in, more and better air for them to breathe, more open spaces for them to play in out-of-doors, and safer theatres, and better conducted music-halls for their indoor amusement.

The Housing of the People.

The County Council has one medical officer and two assistants, and pays half the salaries of 23 medical officers and 188, out of a total of 219, sanitary inspectors appointed by the Vestries. Since the Council came into existence the number of inspectors in London has doubled. In addition, two women inspectors of workshops and laundries, fifteen coal and coke inspectors, and two street inspectors have been appointed. The most important duties of these officers are to inquire into the sanitary condition of houses and workshops, report on the water supply, and investigate the causes of any epidemic. The Public Health and Housing Committee is not the sanitary authority for the whole of London, but it supervises the administration of the Public Health Act (London), 1891, by the local authorities, with a view to secure an adequate sanitary staff in each district, and as far as possible the enforcement of the law. It has drawn up a set of bye-laws in order to regulate and secure greater uniformity of action by the local authorities, and thus to raise the sanitary standard of London. It makes bye-laws to regulate the removal and disposal of offensive material, to fix the clearance of dust-bins to at least once a week, to secure proper water-closets in houses, etc. This Committee also administers the Artizans' and Laborers' Dwellings Improvements Act, 1875, and the Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1890, under which insanitary areas and houses all over London are investigated, clearances are made, and new buildings erected in the place of slum-dwellings.

386,973 persons in London live in one-roomed homes; 830,182 persons live in tenements with two or more than two in a room (Census Returns, 1891). Twenty per cent. of the population of London live in overcrowded dwellings (London Statistics, vol. iv., p. 20). "London needs the rebuilding of at least 400,000 rooms to house its poorest citizens, at the minimum of two decent rooms per family, not to speak of the ideal of three rooms and a scullery, which should be our goal" (The London Programme, p. 128).

The Council has, from the first, built either separate cottages, or, where this has been impossible, dwellings on the self-contained tenement system, which provides for separate sink and lavatory accommodation, and secures for the working-class tenant a distinct and complete little home of his own. The internal fittings and arrangements are made as neat and convenient as possible, an adequate system of ventilation, and a certain cubical capacity for every room, sleeping and living alike, are insisted upon; and, notwithstanding the better accommodation provided, the rents charged are based on those prevailing in the immediate neighborhood.

Sanitary Inspectors.

The Council's inspectors during the year ended 31st March, 1894, inspected 1,061 premises in respect of nuisances alleged to exist; have made 4,958 visits to premises upon which offensive trades are conducted; and have visited 3,962 cowsheds, 11,011 milk-shops, and 243 dairies. The Council granted licences during the year to 525 slaughter-houses, 489 cow-houses, and 7 knackers' yards. In one case a manure manufacturer at Rotherhithe was, after several convictions for breaches of the Council's bye-laws, deprived of the right to carry on his business.

The Council's inspectors of explosives and its coal officers are instructed to report any nuisance from the non-consumption of smoke that may come to their notice in the course of their other duties. In this way 774 cases of serious nuisance from smoke were reported in 1894, and in each case the attention of the sanitary authority concerned was called to the nuisance with a view to its abatement.

New Streets and Buildings.

Through the Building Act Committee the Council has organized a definite attack on the jerry-builder and house-farmer, and has begun to repair the neglect of past years in the clearing away of London's slums and rookeries, with all their evil outcome of intemperance, disease and crime. One of the most important pieces of this work was the drafting and steering through Parliament in 1894 of the London Building Act, which provides that the making of all new streets and the alteration of old ones shall be subject to the approval of the Council; that streets for carriage traffic shall be not less than forty feet wide, and those for foot passengers only not less than twenty feet wide; that no dwelling shall be erected or re-erected within twenty feet from the centre of a roadway, or ten feet from the centre of a footway for passengers, and that the height of the buildings shall not exceed the width of the street; that the space at the back shall be at least 150 square feet, and ten feet deep, and that the space shall increase by an angle of 634 degrees with the height of the houses; that dark recesses and shafts in blocks of dwellings shall not be allowed; and that the width of all recesses shall be half the height. Under the Act, provision must also be made for the proper lighting of new buildings in order to make it possible for the sunshine to have access to all tenements

down to the street level; and powers are given for regulating the erection of buildings in which dangerous and noxious businesses are to be carried on, for preventing building on land lying too low to be properly drained, for the removal of dilapidated and neglected buildings, and for other purposes. During 1894 the Council granted 39 applications for the formation of new streets whose total length exceeded ten miles; and condemned 6,286 dangerous structures.

Main Drainage.

The main sewers of London (but not the local drains) are under the management of the Council, in whose sludge vessels 2,102,000 tons of sludge were, during 1894, sent to sea. The whole body of sewage used to flow into a vast underground reservoir, in which it was penned by the rising tide, and allowed to flow away with the falling water. The Thames used therefore to receive every day some two hundred million gallons of unpurified sewage. Under the improved methods which have been put into operation by the Council, the sewage is subjected to scientific processes, and is passed into the river as an inodorous, innocuous liquid. In consequence, the water in the Thames has been so purified as to make it possible for shrimps, whitebait, dace, and other fish to live where they could not before (even as high up as Woolwich), and the black mud banks have disappeared, and given place to clean shores of gravel, clay, or river sand.

Water.

Although the Council has not the Water Supply in its own hands, it has been making enquiries as to the provision of an adequate supply of pure water that shall keep pace with the growing needs of the people. In 1895 it introduced eight bills into Parliament for the acquisition of the existing means of supply, and in the meantime it has also so efficiently used its statutory powers to secure a constant supply of water, and thus to do away with the intermittently filled and often foul cisterns, as to have secured a constant supply to 613,187 houses, as against 423,567 so supplied in 1889. Of all the houses in London, 78.7 per cent. were on constant supply in 1894.

Gas.

The powers of the Council over the Gas Companies are of a very limited nature. They are confined to testing the illuminating power of the gas and the accuracy of the meters. During 1893 thirteen cases of deficient illuminating power and five of excess of sulphur impurity were reported.

Parks and Open Spaces.

During the first six years of the Council's existence, one new open space was secured for London, on an average, every two months. Every week it adds on an average between three and four acres to London's breathing grounds and playing fields. In 1888