View report page

14
When the acid test of an election came round again the strength of
the opposition was made plain: all three retiring members though offering
themselves for the election were rejected in favour of "popular"
candidates. As a consequence the composition of the Board in 1856 was
hostile groups in almost equal strength and it was a difficult year for
public business. The final battle was fought in the election of 1857:
a resignation during the previous year had raised the vacancies to be
filled on this occasion to four. There were nineteen candidates and no
dearth of members of the old Board among them. But it was the "popular"
candidates who once again swept into victory by securing all four seats,
Tottenham, in no uncertain manner, had rejected government at the hands
of the benevolent local plutocracy which, thus far in its sanitary history,
had virtually monopolised the Local Board.
A remarkable feature of the course of events in Tottenham between
1850 and 1857, which will have struck those acquainted with the history
of English public health, is how closely the Tottenham Board's experiences
mirror those of the General Board of Health The General Board, like
Tottenham's Board, the first of its kind, similarly autocratic and independent
in outlook, equally determined to press on with sanitary reforms
if need be in defiance of public opinion, achieving great success, but
making powerful enemies and misjudging at times the complexity of technical
problem and finally - in the case of the General Board in 1854 after
a life of six years-being ruthlessly and ungraciously ejected from power
without acknowledgment for magnificent services rendered Chance had
brought these two Boards into a kind of informal alliance; the General
Board lending its great authority to support the Tottenham Board against
popular ignorance and apathy and, in return, finding in Tottenham a model
to which- it could point as an example of what might be done under its
firm guidance When the public outcry swept over the General Board in
its latter days, under the conviction that the Board was the fountain
head of a not-to-be-tolerated, bureaucratic, centralizing policy, it was
a fierce widespread movement - a heresy hunt in which friends of the
Board could fall under suspicion. And there can be little doubt that it
was ripples from the larger issue mingling in Tottenham with the native
bred resentment against the Local Board which determined such an utter
root and stock rejection of offers of further public service by men who
were among the most eligible and worthy of the inhabitants.
LOCAL BOARD OF HEALTH, 1858 TO 1863.
By 1858 the semi-political disturbances which have just been described
had to all intents and purposes subsided and it was in an atmosphere
of easy indifference that Tottenham slipped into a new phase in the history
of its sanitary administration. The annual election for membership of
the Local Board was a tame affair that year: in sharp contrast to the
lively scenes in the previous three years it passed off without even a
contest. Nor was it merely a temporary retreat to civic apathy. Small
polls, (in 1859, for example, fewer than thirty percent of the possible