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Working Classes of 1885 contained the following recommendation:—
"They would suggest that the sites now occupied by the
Millbank, Coldbath-fields, and Pentonville prisons should be
conveyed to the Metropolitan Board of "Works, in trust for the
benefit of those portions of the town which are most overcrowded.
In fixing the price at which the sites should be so conveyed, due
regard should be had to the purposes for which they are so
required. To carry into effect the object of securing additional
land where most required in the metropolis for building room for
workmen's dwellings, and for open spates connected there with, power
should be given, previous to their acqursitun by the Metropolitan
Board of Works, to sell or exchange, with the approval of the
Home Office, any portion of the sites referred to, that the areas
obtained instead should be devoted in proportions, to be fixed by
the confirming authority, to these uses and to no other."
If the Justices had thought fit to re purchase, then, by section 3
of the Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1885, it was lawful
for them to sell and convey the respective sites, or any part or
parts thereof, to the Metropolitan Board of Works, at a fair
market price.
Under the circumstances, hereafter stated, these provisions
were not called into existence, as the Justices declined to
purchase under the Act of 1877, and the direction to the Secretary
of State to sell, under the Act of 1877, and pay the surplus to
the ratepayers, still, therefore, remains in full force.
Although the Justices declined to re-purchase, Mr. Lushington
on behalf of the Secretary of State, wrote on the 26th April,
1886, to the late Metropolitan Board of Worts, referring to the
provisions of the above-mentioned third section of the Housing of
the Working Classes Act, 1885, and stating that provision had, in
consequence of the Justices having declined to accept these sites,
now become, strictly speaking, inoperative, but that Mr. Childers
was desirous that the question of the expediency of utilizing these
sites for the erection of dwellings for the working classes should
not on that account be put aside, and requesting that the Metropolitan
Board of Works would inform the Secretary of State
whether there was any likelihood of the Board being willing to
enter into a negociation with the Prison Commissioners for the
purchase of these two sites, or either of them, with a view to their
appropriation to the erection of dwellings for the working classes, such
purchase to be made at a price somewhat lower than the full
value which might be expected from a sale of the sites by auction.
On the 8th June, 1886, the Clerk of the Board wrote to Mr.
Lushington, declining to purchase for the purpose mentioned, on