[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Shoreditch, Parish of St. Leonard].

  • St. Leonard Shoreditch (London, England). Parish Council.
Date:
[1892]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: [Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Shoreditch, Parish of St. Leonard]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: City of London, London Metropolitan Archives

    12/243 page 12
    12 work it is a very fortunate circumstance that the Vestry have now such a direct control over the work that any complaints can be immediately attended to, and the Vestry do not run the risk of incurring heavy penalties through the neglect of a careless contractor. ELECTRIC LIGHTING. The Shoreditch Vestry is the second local authority in the Metropolis and the first in the Eastern District which has obtained powers to undertake the supply of Electricity for public and private purposes. Electric lighting and motive power have passed from the experimental stage to that of proved success. From being regarded as the luxury of the rich, electricity is fast showing itself to be a necessity for the poor owing to the great sanitary advantages which electric light possesses over all other means of illumination. The Vestry of St. Pancras have demonstrated that electricity can be produced in large quantities at an actual cost much below the present price of gas, and the vast strides which are being made every year in the application of electricity to the industries and necessities of life, make it certain that the monopoly of supplying this universally useful force, will in a few years become the most valuable and highly prized undertaking of local authorities. With the experience before them of the enormously increased value of the water and gas undertakings of the Metropolis for the benefit of private Companies, it is lamentable that so many local authorities in the Metropolis have allowed the monopoly of electric light, which will probably excel in magnitude those of water and gas, to pass out of their hands for forty-two years, and even then only to be re-purchasable by the local authority at a large expense. On the 2nd of July, 1891, the Vestry received notices of the intention of three Electric Lighting Companies to apply for provisional orders for supplying this Parish with electricity. I reported to the Parliamentary Committee that if the consent of the Vestry continued to be refused to these Orders without anything being done by the Vestry itself, the Board of Trade might in their discretion grant such Orders in spite of the Vestry's consent not having been given, and in that case, it at a future time the Vestry desired to get the monopoly into their hands they would have to pay dearly for it, as in the case of Gas and Water Companies. I also pointed out that the Board of Trade had granted Orders to local authorities with power to transfer their powers and duties under the Order on favourable conditions to contractors, and by this means the local authority obtained the monopoly, and could make its own terms with private companies as to division of profits, &c., if required. That if the Vestry obtained such an Order (the cost of which, if done in my department, would not exceed £120), they would not be bound to take any steps for two years, or for a longer period on reasonable grounds, and that 1 considered that the monopoly was worth a very great deal more than the cost of obtaining it.
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