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35
tirely lost their resilience. In the same breath in which the Herald
spoke of "Poor Tottenham" it was also finding good reason to believe that,
given a little respite from mismanagement and a truce to overbuilding by
speculative builders, the parish would quickly recover its good name and
fill its empty houses. A most encouraging feature was that Parliament
had approved the Provisional Order which would allow the Board's membership
to be raised from nine members to twelve: the special election for
three additional members would soon be held and the Herald had no doubts
that good candidates would be found and that the occasion would mark a
turning point in the quality of Tottenham's public administration.
These high hopes were amply fulfilled. Recent events had caused a
resurgence of public spiritedness among a group of inhabitants better
qualified to undertake the management of public affairs than the Board's
old members. During the emergency the group had combined successfully
and by working through the Vestry to get the Sewage Bill quashed had compelled
the Local Board back to a proper dependency on the will of the
ratepayers. Shortly afterwards they had banded themselves into an association,
under the title of the Tottenham Sanitary Association, with the
specific object of educating public opinion to the importance of improving
the parish's sanitary conditions. Presently the Association pledged itself
to support a better type of candidate at Board elections and within
a year men of the stamp of Mr. Littler, Q.C., Mr. Read, M. P., and the
philanthropic Mr. Pedley had taken their seats on the Board and the process
of reclaiming Tottenham and revitalising its local government had begun.
FOOTNQTR
Unfortunately the authors know of no local sanitary histories which deal with the evolution
of sanitary administration in a town or parish during the third quarter of the nineteenth century
in the way they have attempted to do in the case of Tottenham, Consequently it is not
possible to make a comparison between Tottenham's remarkable experiences and those of other districts,
It seems not improbable, however, that they were nearly unique and that no place,
sanitarily speaking soared quite so high and fall quite so low all within a space of twenty
years. In support of this view there is, on the one hand, evidence to which we have made
reference showing that .round about 18 55 Tottenham by contemporary standards had attained the
very highest level of sanitary services. On the other hand, to read the voluminous evidence
given before the famous Royal Sanitary Commission, which in 18 69 carried out an extensive enquiry
into English sanitary practices, is to find nothing so abysmal as the state into which
Tottenham had drifted by that date. The Commission, it is true, learnt of districts being
entirely devoid of sanitary administration and of others which though under Local Boards of
Health had never attempted to modernise their sanitation; but Tottenham, with a facade of sanitary
arrangements which were, in fact, rotten to the core by 1869, was in an even worse position
In sanitary matters it had been the hapless victim of "vaulting anbition which o' er
leaps itself,"
It seems not unlikely, furthermore, that Tottenham knew uniqueness in another direction,
To have experienced within two decades such a strange sequence of local governments as a plutocracy,
an oligarchy and a near miss at a dictatorship (or "r«le by a parish Boss" as the Webbs
designated similar examples of local dictatorships which they came across-in the course of their
studies of the pre-Reform system of parish government) cannot have been the lot of many, if
indeed any, other parishes.
There is yet another remarkable feature in connection with Tottenham namely, that both
the quantity and the quality of material open to those who delve into'its nineteenth century
history is rich beyond belief. This material in its different forms has been carefully and
wisely collected, concentrated and preserved within the Borough at the Central Library, at Bruce
Castle Museum and along with the Council's muniments in the Town Hall. To all those whom the
authors have troubled in these quarters in exploring the local records, they wish to tender their
sincere thanks To Mr, Lindsay Taylor, Town Clerk: to Mr, E. W. McClellan, Chief Librarian,
to mr. F. H. Fen ton, Sub-Librarian and to Mr. C. H, Rock, lately Curator of the Museum they are
Particularly grateful for friendly assistance. To Dr. Hogben, Medical Officer of Health,
there is a special debt owing, both for his help in many directions and for the encouraging interest
he has shewn at all times in the progress of this study.