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9
for its public health administration would lie with a relatively exclusive
body.
THE LOCAL BOARD OF HEALTH, 1850 - 1857.
The Local Board, when it met for the first time on 15th April, 1850,
unlike the members individually, was "seized and possessed" of absolutely
nothing. Meeting in a borrowed room it set about the business of
local government without a staff or a bank balance, without the benefit
of orders, circulars or memoranda from the General Board, without the
comfort of relevant administrative precedents and with nothing in the way
of guidance except the prescriptive clauses of the Public Health Act and
Mr. Ranger's discourse on "remedies".
It is_ not surprising that numbers of the Local Boards which were
springing up at this period in different parts of the country under similarly
unpropitious circumstances soon wilted and drifted into an ineffective
chaos, from which the General Board was powerless to rouse them.
Clearly, the future of any Local Board depended above all things at this
stage on the ability, determination and public spiritedness of its own
members and it makes it the more worthwhile to look a little closer from
this point of view at Tottenham, where the Board achieved an unusual
measure of early success.
There had been no lack of number or variety of candidates for places
on Tottenham's Board: thirty-seven had competed, of whom three-fifths
when identified in the social classification of Kelly's Directory were
of the "gentry" - active or retired City men or men of independent means
-and two fifths of the "trades" class - auctioneers, surveyors, farmers,
a surgeon, a woollen draper, a builder, a school master, an omnibus proprietor,
a butcher and a druggist- Mr. Dean's name was among the nominations
but he was denied the opportunity of rendering further services
to the parish for just before the election day he died suddenly.
The "gentry" triumphed overwhelmingly at the polls. Only one of
the nine places fell to a tradesman, an auctioneer; and as if to right
this single indiscretion the voters replaced him by a wealthy City underwriter
when, being on the retiring rota, he stood for re-election at the
end of the first year. At about the same time a death vacancy was very
properly filled by the election of the Vicar. Apart from these changes
the original Board, by regular re-election of retiring members, remained
unchanged for five years.
it was a body of some distinction, comprising two members who subsequently
gained places in the Dictionary of National Biography, the one
as a scientist and Fellow of the Royal Society, the other as a public
administrator: a merchant, who was later a Lord Mayor elect of the City
and knighted: a partner in a famous private bank: a gentleman farmer,
with a name as a geologist: the proprietor of one of the great mansions
of the parish, Tottenham Park: and two whose benefactions to the parish