class="tdr">37

[viii]
[ix]

INTRODUCTION.

BY G.J. JOHNSON.

This Handbook, being prepared for the use of the members of the British Association, at their meeting in Birmingham, in 1886, it is deemed desirable to preface it by a very brief sketch of the progress of the town since the first meeting here of the Association in 1839, a period only three years short of half a century.

The Corporation.[1]—When the Association met in Birmingham, on the 26th of August, 1839, the Borough had recently been incorporated—the first meeting of the Town Council having been held on the 27th of the previous December; but when the Council attempted to exercise the power of making a Borough Rate, the Overseers refused to levy it in consequence of objections which had been raised to the validity of the Charter. In addition to these pecuniary difficulties, the town was just recovering from the effects of the Chartist riots, in the Bull Ring, seven weeks before. The Corporation had not the control of a single policeman or constable, and the town was in charge of a body of London police.

The same day on which the Association met, the Royal assent was given to an Act (2 and 3 Vic., c. 88), hurriedly passed, to appoint a Commissioner of Police in the Borough for two years, and to authorise an advance of £10,000, for the purpose of organizing and paying a police force.

The validity of the charter of incorporation was ultimately settled by a statutory confirmation (5 and 6 Vic., c. III), which received the royal assent on the 12th of August, 1842. As a consequence, the control of the police was transferred to the Watch Committee of the Corporation. At the time of the transfer the strength of the force was 300 men, and the population of the borough 183,000. The population is now about 427,000, and the police force is 550 in number, and is both efficient and adequate.

The great cost of conveying prisoners and lunatics to the County Gaol and Asylum at Warwick, and the inadequacy of both to the increasing population, rendered the building of a Borough Gaol and Lunatic Asylum at Winson Green a necessity, and as soon as the Corporation obtained the control of the police the gaol was proceeded with and opened in 1849. In the following year the Lunatic Asylum was opened, to which was added, in 1882, another Asylum at Rubery Hill, near Bromsgrove.

The year 1851 is memorable in our municipal history for the vesting in the Corporation, for the first time, of complete control over the entire borough by the transfer to it of the conflicting powers and jurisdictions of the other governing bodies (see pp. 18 and 19.) Up to that date the formation and maintenance of the streets, roads, and footways of the town, the lighting and drainage, and all the other important work now undertaken by the Public Works Committee of the Corporation could not be dealt with in any uniform system, because six other governing bodies or officials had statutory powers over the portions of the Borough which were outside the parish of Birmingham. With the year 1852 a new and uniform system commenced, and not an hour too soon, having regard to the rapid increase of the population and the consequent multiplication of new streets and roads. The aspect of the town has been completely changed in the paving of the roads and footways, the lighting of the streets, the widening of many of the principal thoroughfares, and the carrying into operation of a complete and uniform system of drainage and sewerage. To the Public Works Committee belongs also the control of the numerous tramways which lead from the centre of the town to the suburbs in every direction, except the upper part of Edgbaston, the approach to which is rendered difficult by the narrowness of Broad Street. The improved system of drainage and sewerage brought to an issue the serious question of how the sewage of the town was to be dealt with. From the year 1858 this had become a serious and increasing difficulty, involving the Corporation in constant and costly litigation with the neighbouring landowners, resulting in injunctions from the Court of Chancery. In 1871 a special Committee called “The Sewage Enquiry Committee” was instituted, who recommended the course ultimately adopted, viz.: the formation of a board representing the whole drainage area, and the establishment of a large sewage farm at Saltley. The latter was first undertaken and found to be a solution of the difficulty, and in the year 1877 the other object was attained by the constitution of the “Birmingham Tame and Rea District Drainage Board,” composed of twenty-two representatives from the different governing bodies in the drainage area, of whom twelve are elected by the Town Council of Birmingham. To this body the sewage farm has been transferred, and is now carried on with the most beneficial result.

Immediately after the passing of the Public Health Act, 1872, the Borough was constituted an Urban Sanitary District and the Council as the Urban Sanitary Authority, set itself vigorously to the work of improving the public health. A Borough Hospital for the treatment of small pox and scarlet fever was established in 1874. The Public Health Act, 1875, indirectly removed for sanitary purposes the limit on rating powers to which the Council were obliged to submit in their Act of 1851. By the zealous labours of the Health Committee, and the liberal application of the pecuniary resources placed at its command by the Act of 1875, the death rate has been reduced from 24.8 per 1,000 in 1874 to 19.1 in 1885, although the mean density of the population has increased in the same period 20 per cent.

In 1851 the first of the four sets of public baths was opened in Kent Street, followed by other sets in Woodcock Street (1860), Northwood Street (1862), and Monument Road (1883). Under the management of the same Committee of the Council are placed the ten public parks and recreation grounds of the Borough, of which five have been given to the Corporation and five have been acquired by purchase. The list is as follows:—