Metropolitan Board of Works
The Metropolitan Board of Works came into being on the 1st of January 1856 to govern a metropolis in crisis. London in the mid-nineteenth century was a city of staggering contradictions: the heart of a growing empire, ringed by docks swelling with global trade, yet governed by over a hundred separate authorities with overlapping and often clashing powers. Getting anything built, cleaned, or connected across that fractured patchwork required the consent of justices of the peace, parish vestries, county magistrates, and the jealously guarded City of London, whose medieval boundaries had been untouched by the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. The city was choking on its own waste, its streets were clogged, and its riverbanks were open sewers. What it needed was a single body with the reach and the money to act.
The Board that Parliament created was a compromise from the start. Its members were not chosen by voters but appointed by parish vestries, which meant it answered to nobody in quite the usual way. It was accountable to Parliament, but no specific ministry was tasked with watching its accounts. That gap between power and accountability would haunt the Board for the rest of its life, right up to its abolition in 1889 and the ignominious cartoon in the magazine Punch that marked its passing. The questions worth asking are how a body born of compromise managed to build the bones of modern London, and why it collapsed into scandal just as that work was nearing completion.
Half of the population of two of the three counties surrounding the City of London lived within a few miles of its ancient walls, yet the City itself had resisted every attempt to expand its boundaries since the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. That Act had established elected municipal boroughs across every major city in Britain except London, leaving the capital governed by a patchwork of county justices, landowners, and parish vestries across Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent.
An attempt to fix this in 1837 was defeated by the wealthier districts of Marylebone and Westminster, whose residents feared losing local powers and the low rates that came with governing only their own prosperous streets. The scheme died in Parliament without reaching a vote. It would take another seventeen years of growth, disease, and disorder before the question came back.
In 1854 a Royal Commission on the Corporation of the City of London proposed dividing the urban area into seven boroughs, each represented on a new Metropolitan Board of Works. That specific plan was abandoned, but it planted the template. The next year Parliament acted, passing the Metropolis Management Act 1855 and dissolving two earlier failed experiments: the Metropolitan Buildings Office, established in 1845, and the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers, established in 1848. Their responsibilities passed to the new Board.
In the summers of 1855 and 1858, London's sewage problem crossed from chronic to catastrophic. The summer of 1858 acquired its own name: the Great Stink. Most of the city's waste flowed freely into the Thames, and the smell that rose from the river made the city nearly uninhabitable during hot weather.
Joseph Bazalgette, who had previously served as engineer to the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers, was appointed Chief Engineer to the Board. The system he built extended to 82 miles of main sewers and 1,100 miles of street sewers, carrying waste away from the river and ending the crisis that had defined London summers for a generation. Bazalgette was also the designer of the Thames Embankment, funded by the Board from 1864 through three separate sections, its surface planted with trees.
William Dibdin, the Board's chief chemist, contributed an idea that would prove important beyond London: he conceived the biological treatment of sewage, using oxidation to break down waste rather than simply relocating it. The engineering legacy of those two men outlasted the Board itself by well over a century.
Charing Cross Road, Garrick Street, Southwark Street, and Shaftesbury and Northumberland Avenues were among the streets cut through the city by the Board, clearing slums and opening routes to relieve London's choking traffic. The Board also turned its attention to the Thames crossings. From 1869 it bought up all the private bridges across its section of the river and freed them of tolls. Putney, Battersea, Waterloo, and Hammersmith Bridges were all rebuilt under its supervision.
Bazalgette drew up plans in 1878 for a new bridge east of London Bridge, a crossing that would eventually become Tower Bridge. The estimated cost was 1.25 million pounds. The Treasury declined to raise the coal and wine duties that formed most of the Board's income, and a private bill seeking alternative funding was rejected by the House of Commons because it would have restricted headroom for light shipping.
The Board did leave a lasting mark in green space. In 1856 it obtained powers to acquire parks and open spaces, subject to parliamentary approval. Finsbury Park was acquired in 1857 and formally opened in 1869. Southwark Park followed, acquired in 1864 and opened the same year as Finsbury Park. Victoria Embankment Gardens opened in 1870, Leicester Square in 1874, Wormwood Scrubs was vested in the Board in 1879, and Hampstead Heath was acquired in 1886. Battersea Park, Kennington Park, Victoria Park, Clapham Common, and Wandsworth Common all came under Board control in 1887. Ravenscourt Park followed in 1888 and Clissold Park in 1889. Dulwich Park was laid out by the Board but opened by its successor, the London County Council, in 1890.
The core of the corruption that destroyed the Board's reputation grew from a single property deal: the Board's purchase of the old Pavilion music hall at Piccadilly Circus in 1879. The site was needed for the construction of Shaftesbury Avenue, and it was leased to a music hall proprietor named R. E. Villiers. Alongside the lease, Villiers paid a covert sum to F. W. Goddard, the Board's Chief Valuer, for favourable treatment.
In 1883 Villiers met with Goddard and Thomas James Robertson, the Board's Assistant Surveyor, to arrange that the remaining portion of the site would be granted to him for a new Pavilion. The two officials agreed, but extracted a condition: one corner of the site would go to a public house managed by W. W. Grey, who was Robertson's brother. The connection was not disclosed to the Board.
In November 1884 Robertson told Villiers to make a formal offer. Villiers proposed a ground rent of 2,700 pounds a year. The Board's superintending architect, George Vulliamy, was asked to value the site, but Vulliamy was elderly and left almost all the work to Goddard and Robertson. The Deputy Chairman later observed that Goddard and Robertson were effectively Vulliamy. Their report valued the ground rent at 3,000 pounds; Villiers immediately accepted. Despite a higher competing offer of 4,000 pounds, the Board pushed the deal through. Goddard continued collecting secret payments, and when Villiers sold the Pavilion in December 1886 he handed Goddard 5,000 pounds. Grey, meanwhile, sold his existing public house on Tichborn Street and split the 10,000-pound profit with Goddard and Robertson.
James Ebenezer Saunders was appointed chief architect on the Pavilion rebuild, on the Grand Hotel, and on the Metropole Hotel on Northumberland Avenue, all on land owned by the Board, though he did little actual design or oversight work. Francis Hayman Fowler had done legitimate work as a Board member but also accepted money from site owners and lessees in circumstances the Royal Commission later described as clear bribery.
At the lowest level of the Board's corruption, John Hebb, the Assistant Architect responsible for theatre safety inspections, began writing to theatre managers before scheduled visits to suggest they might wish to send him free tickets. Given the Board's power to close any theatre it found wanting, most managers complied. Theatre owners, displeased both by the inspections and by the extraction, typically sent Hebb to seats at the back of the house or behind pillars.
A series of articles in the Financial News beginning on the 25th of October 1886 exposed the Goddard-Robertson affair. The Board launched its own investigation under Chairman Magheramorne, which concluded only that Robertson had been injudicious in allowing relatives to become tenants without informing the Board. That finding satisfied nobody. On the motion of Lord Randolph Churchill, who represented Paddington South where anti-Board sentiment was strongest, the House of Commons voted on the 16th of February 1888 to convene a Royal Commission.
Lord Herschell led the Royal Commission and found the Financial News allegations correct and even understated. Additional corruption among the Board's architect-members came to light, though the Commission stopped short of declaring corruption endemic across the institution. By then the political context had already shifted. The President of the Local Government Board, Charles Ritchie, announced that elected county councils would be created across the United Kingdom. The Metropolitan Board of Works was abolished by the Local Government Act 1888.
The London County Council was elected on the 21st of January 1889 and was due to assume its powers on the 1st of April. With the Board a lame duck, its final weeks were not graceful. It awarded generous pensions to retiring officers and salaries to those who would transfer to the LCC. It granted the Samaritan Hospital in Marylebone permission to use an additional twelve feet of pavement over the LCC's written objection and without reply. Then, at its final meeting, it moved to award the contract for the Blackwall Tunnel, ignoring another written request from the LCC to defer. The Chairman replied on the 18th of March 1889 that the Board intended to proceed. The government responded by ending the MBW's existence on the 21st of March 1889.
Punch published a cartoon titled Peace to its Hashes, depicting the Board as a black suit of armour, and praised it for showing how jobbery might be elevated to the level of the fine arts. The Board's Spring Gardens headquarters, designed by its first chief architect Frederick Marrable in an Italianate style and completed in 1859, was taken over by the LCC until County Hall opened in 1922. Renamed Old County Hall, it served as a satellite office until its lease expired in 1958, then was used for central government functions before being demolished in 1971 for a new headquarters for the British Council.
Common questions
What was the Metropolitan Board of Works and when was it created?
The Metropolitan Board of Works was the upper tier of local government for the area that later became Inner London, created by the Metropolis Management Act 1855 and formally operational from the 1st of January 1856. It replaced the Metropolitan Buildings Office and the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers and was responsible for planning and building infrastructure across the metropolis.
Why was the Metropolitan Board of Works abolished?
The Metropolitan Board of Works was abolished by the Local Government Act 1888 following a Royal Commission investigation into corruption scandals involving bribery, embezzlement, and unfair contract procurement. Its powers passed to the directly elected London County Council, which assumed full authority on the 21st of March 1889.
What infrastructure did the Metropolitan Board of Works build in London?
The Board built a sewerage system comprising 82 miles of main sewers and 1,100 miles of street sewers, under Chief Engineer Joseph Bazalgette. It also constructed Charing Cross Road, Shaftesbury Avenue, and Northumberland Avenue, rebuilt Putney, Battersea, Waterloo, and Hammersmith Bridges, funded the Thames Embankment from 1864, and acquired parks including Hampstead Heath and Finsbury Park.
Who was Joseph Bazalgette and what was his role in the Metropolitan Board of Works?
Joseph Bazalgette served as Chief Engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works, having previously been engineer to the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers. He designed the core London sewerage system, the Thames Embankment, and drew up plans in 1878 for a bridge east of London Bridge estimated at 1.25 million pounds, a project that eventually became Tower Bridge.
What was the Pavilion scandal that brought down the Metropolitan Board of Works?
The scandal centred on the Board's purchase of the Pavilion music hall at Piccadilly Circus in 1879 and the subsequent lease to music hall proprietor R. E. Villiers. Chief Valuer F. W. Goddard and Assistant Surveyor Thomas James Robertson accepted secret payments from Villiers and steered a ground rent of 3,000 pounds through the Board despite a higher competing offer of 4,000 pounds. When Villiers sold the Pavilion in December 1886, he paid Goddard a further 5,000 pounds.
How was the Metropolitan Board of Works governed and why was it controversial?
The Board's 45 members were not directly elected but appointed by parish vestries, with larger vestries receiving two members and the City of London receiving three. It was accountable to Parliament but no specific ministry supervised its accounts, creating a democratic deficit that critics found troubling. All property owners paid for its work through local rates, yet had no direct vote over its decisions.
All sources
9 references cited across the entry
- 1BookProfessionalism, Patronage and Public Service in Victorian London.Gloria C. Clifton — The Athlone Press — 1992
- 4NewsLondon Sewers - Seven WondersBBC
- 6JournalWilliam Dibdin and the Idea of Biological Sewage TreatmentChristopher Hamlin — Johns Hopkins University Press — 1988
- 7BookWalking Tour London: Sketches of the city's architectural treasures... Journey Through London's Urban LandscapesG. Byrne Bracken — Marshall Cavendish — 2011
- 9BookThe Municipal Parks, Gardens, and Open Spaces of London; their history and associationsJohn James Sexby — Eliot Stock — 1905