Local Government, Local Legislation: Municipal Initiative in Parliament from 1858-1872

In the mid-Victorian period, when British international influence and power were at their height, concerns about local economic and social conditions were only slowly coming to be recognised as part of the obligations and expectations of central government.

Adopting a legal history perspective, this study reveals how municipal authorities of this period had few public law powers to regulate local conditions, or to provide services, and thus the more enterprising went direct to Parliament to ...