[34] "Vested rights in crowded houses, deadly stenches, putrid water, foggy courts, and cesspools." See "Health by Act of Parliament," _Household Words_, 1850, vol. i. [35] P.P. 1850, vol. xxi. p. 42. [36] P.P. 1850, vol. xxi. p. 110. [37] In London in 1832-3 (population 1,682,000), the attacks were 14,144, the deaths were 6,729. 1848-9 (population 2,206,000), the attacks were about 30,000, the deaths about 14,600, so that in the last epidemic the deaths were more numerous than the attacks in 1832-3, whilst the attacks were more than double. [38] Dr. Grainger, P.P. 1849-50, vol. xxi. [39] P.P. 1850, vol. xxi. p. 147. [40] This was rendered illegal by the amended City Sewers Act of 1851. [41] See P.P. 1854-5, vol. x., General Report of Medical Council. [42] Simon, 1st Report, 1849. [43] 14 and 15 Vic. cap. 28. [44] 16 and 17 Vic. cap. 41. [45] P.P. 1854, vol. xxxv. p. 7. [46] 14 and 15 Vic. cap. 34, 1851. [47] See Hansard, 1851, vol. cxv. [48] Ibid. [49] "The Metropolis Water Act, 1852," 15 and 16 Vic. cap. 84. [50] See P.P. 1854, vol. xlv. p. 22. [51] See P.P. 1854-5, vol. xlv., Reports of General Board of Health. [52] Ibid. [53] See speech of Sir B. Hall in 1885 in House of Commons, Hansard, vol. cxxxvii. p. 715. CHAPTER II 1855-1860 THE Act "for the better Local Management of the Metropolis"[54] which was passed by Parliament in 1855 was the turning point in the sanitary history and evolution of London. It put a term to the chaos of local government in "greater London" and swept away the three hundred trumpery and petty existing local governing bodies. It created a legally recognisable metropolis by defining its component parts and boundaries. It established a definite system of local representative government in that metropolis for the administration of its local affairs. It conferred upon the new authorities not only the powers vaguely possessed and imperfectly, if at all, acted on by their predecessors, but a considerable number of new ones. It laid the basis of an organisation for the sanitary supervision of the inhabitants of each parish of greater London. And with the object of making provision for the effective treatment of some of the numerous matters affecting London as a whole--matters of a general and not of a local character--with which smaller local authorities could not possibly deal, and with the further object of securing a certain uniformity of administration by the new local authorities, it founded a central governing body for the metropolis. Simultaneously Parliament passed a new "Nuisances Removal Act for England"[55] which was made applicable to London, and which, coupled with the health provisions in the Metropolis Local Management Act, bestowed upon the metropolis a sort of code of sanitary laws in some degree similar to those enjoyed by other parts of England. And also an Act[56] making stricter provisions as to the construction of buildings in the metropolis.