"It will be imperative upon the local administrative bodies to hold meetings for the transaction of business; to appoint a surveyor; to appoint an inspector of nuisances; to make public sewers; to substitute sufficient sewers in case old ones be discontinued; to require owners or occupiers to provide house-drains; to cleanse and water streets; to appoint or contract with scavengers to cleanse, cover, or fill up offensive ditches; ... to provide sufficient supply of water for drainage, public and private, and for domestic use. "The permissive powers to be granted to the local administrative bodies ... include the power to make house-drains upon default of owner or occupier, to make bye-laws with respect to the removal of filth, to whitewash and purify houses after notice ... to require that certain furnaces be made to consume their own smoke ... to provide places for public recreation, to purchase and maintain waterworks." The Bill, which was duly passed and became an Act, in fact provided means for coping with many of the sorest dangers, it curbed some of the powers for evil which so many persons had such little scruple in exercising; it provided methods for bringing to punishment at least some of the evil-doers who hitherto had gone scot free; and it held out some prospects of the diminution of the huge death rate and still huger sick rate. Though a somewhat similar Bill, introduced in 1847, and which was withdrawn, had included the metropolis, this Act did not apply to the metropolis. Its application was limited to the rest of England and Wales. London--the capital of the kingdom--was, it was said, "reserved for a separate Bill." "The separate Bill," however, did not make its appearance. The subtle, all-pervading influence of vested rights was too powerful for any such reform to be attempted.[34] And so, the Government and Parliament, deliberately excluding the metropolis from this beneficial legislation, left untouched the centre and main emporium of disease, and left the people of London exposed on all sides to the merciless onslaught of the direst diseases which can afflict mankind. Cholera, however, the only power able to awe the Government, was now so close at hand that some special provision had to be devised for the protection of the public health. Parliament, this time not excluding the metropolis, re-enacted the trumpery "Nuisance Removal and Diseases Prevention Act" of 1846, with some slight enlargements, and one important addition, namely, authority for the appointment by the Privy Council of a General Board of Health, which might issue directions and regulations for the prevention of epidemic and contagious disease.