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appeal, and contributed twenty guineas towards his costs.
The case was argued on the 3rd August, and judgment
given on the 30th November, that the words "annual
value" in the Company's Acts mean the net (and not
the gross) value.
The Corporation of London then introduced a Bill into
Parliament dealing with the London Water Supply,
making it optional on the part of the consumers to receive
water by meter, defining the annual value as the rateable
value upon which the Poor rate is made; compelling the
adoption of a sliding scale for the dividends; and making
regulations with respect to the capital of the companies.
This Vestry, however, though recognising the desirability
and necessity of the whole question being comprehensively
dealt with, did not see their way to supporting the Bill, as
it appeared to them that the effect of the provision as to
an optional meter supply would be to benefit the ratepayers
of the City itself, by a large decrease in the water
rentals, and probably to provoke the Companies to make
reprisals in the poor parishes outside the City to recoup
them for their loss of revenue. The Legislature appears
to have taken the same view, for the Bill was thrown out
on the second reading on the 11th March, 1884.
Proposed Board School, Green Terrace.—At the end
of November it was found, that the London School Board
had scheduled ten houses in Green Terrace (Nos. 1 to 10),
and a Lecture Hall and three houses in Upper Gloucester
Street as a site for a Board School. These premises being
houses of a superior class, with workshops attached, and the
occupants persons with businesses which would suffer by
removal, the Vestry were of opinion that the action of the
School Board would tend to the deterioration of the Parish,
and in this view they were supported by the inhabitants of
the scheduled houses, and their neighbours generally,
including the New River Company, who presented a
Petition to the Vestry protestiug against the action of the