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84
Metropolitan Board of works subject to the sanction of
the Board of Trade In London, the enforcement of these byelaws
should be entrusted to the Corporation of the City and to the
Vestries and District Boards
For the protection of the public it is necessary that there should be
a ready means of dealing with every wire
For this purpose every wire should be identified, and the bye-law
should provide for the best method of identification, by registration
or otherwise, and for the removal of all ownerless wires
The Vestry agree in the main with these proposals,
although they fear that the conclusions of the Committee will
prove inadequate to thoroughly deal with a subject in which
the rights of private owners, the convenience of those who
use the Telephone System and the safety of the public, are so
interwoven The Vestry, however, hope that some Bill
applying both to existing wires and those hereafter to be
erected may yet become law, before the necessity of some
control is painfully forced upon the public by an alarming
accident While care must be taken on the one hand not
to unduly interfere with the development of so great a public
convenience as the Telephone, still considerations of public
safety demand that these wires should be placed under some
sort of control The necessity for immediate action has been
emphasized by the enormous amount of damage done to overhead
wires by the snowstorm of January 6th, and the
numerous narrow escapes from peril arising therefrom
A curious anomaly in the law has also forced itself on the
attention of the Vestry during the year, by the erection of
overhead wires for the purpose of supplying electricity by
the Grosvenor Gallery Electric Lighting Company The
Electric Lighting Act, 1882, expressly prohibits the erection
of overhead wires by "undertakers" without the sanction of
the Local Authority; that is to say, any company, firm, or
individual, obtaining a provisional order, or license, is preciuded
from stretching wires across streets without consent The
company in question, however, are not working under either a
provisional order or license, and the Electric lighting Act