There was no authority so important as to have any extended area for municipal purposes under its control and management except certain bodies, five in number, entitled "Commissioners of Sewers," charged with duties in connection with the sewerage of their districts. In some parishes some of the affairs of the parish were managed by the parishioners in open vestry assembled, at which assembly Churchwardens, Overseers of the Poor, and Surveyors of Highways were appointed to carry out certain limited classes of work. In others, the parishioners elected a select vestry to do the work of the parish. But for many of the vitally important municipal affairs there were no authorities at all. As the non-City and out-districts became more thickly peopled, and streets and houses increased in number, the inconvenience of there being practically no local government at all made itself felt. In some cases, the owners of the estates which were being so rapidly absorbed into London and being built upon, applied to Parliament for powers to regulate those estates. In other cases, persons with interests in a special locality associated themselves together and obtained a private Act of Parliament giving them authority, under the name of Commissioners or Trustees, to tax and in a very limited way to govern a particular district or group of streets forming part of a parish. Thus it happened that a large number of petty bodies of all sorts and kinds came into existence. Any district, however small, was suffered to obtain a local Act of Parliament for the purpose of managing some of its affairs, and this, too, without any reference to the interests of the immediate neighbours, or of the metropolis as a whole. Most of the limited and somewhat primitive powers possessed by them were derived from an Act passed in 1817,[6] and related to the paving of streets and the prevention of nuisances therein. Some of these bodies were authorised to appoint surveyors or inspectors; also "scavengers, rakers, or cleaners" to carry away filth from streets and houses, but the exercise of such powers was, of course, purely optional. Indeed, there were scarcely any two parishes in London governed alike. What the exact number of these various petty authorities was is unknown. Of paving boards alone, it is said that about the middle of the last century there were no less than eighty-four in the metropolis--nineteen of them being in one parish. The lighting of the parish of Lambeth was under the charge of nine local trusts. The affairs of St. Mary, Newington, were under the control of thirteen Boards or trusts, in addition to two turnpike trusts.[7] In Westminster:--