View report page

The Board would call the attention of the Parishioners to the
above items, which form a very large proportion of the rates, over
which they have no control, and against which there is no appeal.
The precept for the year 1875-6 amounts to £6,751 15s. 4d.
nearly a sixth part of the annual expenditure of this Board.

In consequence of the extravagant and lavish expenditure in which
the School Board have indulged, much dissatisfaction was expressed
by the Ratepayers in all parts of the Metropolis, and the Board
gladly co-operated with the Vestries of St. George Hanover Square,
Kensington, St. Marylebone, St. Pancras, St. Martin-in-the-Fields,
Mile End Old Town, Clerkenwell, and St. Luke's City Road, and
the District Boards for Westminster, Holborn, Fulham and Whitechapel,
in protesting against the heavy demand for the present year,
amounting in this District to £3,875 19s. 3d., and at a meeting
of the delegates on 27th April last, the following Resolution was
passed unanimously:—
"That this meeting, constituted of the Delegates of the several parishes of
the Metropolis, deplores the course of action that has marked of late the conduct
of the School Board, in changing the character for which the schools were
originally intended, in establishing Board Schools in the very neighbourhoods
where voluntary schools have existed and been found sufficient for their purposes;
and also in the extravagant outlay which it has sanctioned, in the
building of schools—making simplicity and economy give way before ornamental
display and superfluous appliances. That this Meeting, powerfully
impressed with the conviction that the burdens now imposed on the Ratepayers
of London are most onerous, and, in fact most oppressive, protests against any
further action on the part of the School Board that shall have a tendency to
augment the present heavy rate. That a deputation be appointed to wait on
Lord Sandon to point out to him the grievances of which the Ratepayers of
London have such just cause of complaint, and praying that legislative means
be employed to limitthe taxing powers of the Board."