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9
THE MORTUARY.
The provision of this place has proved to be of considerable
advantage to the Parish, and the bodies of persons from Bethnal
Green have also been admitted, under pressing circumstances,
pending the provision of a similar institution in that Parish. The
number of bodies admitted during the year was 125. No complaints
as to any annoyance or nuisance have been made.
PUBLIC GAS LIGHTING.
During this year a correspondence took place between the Vestry
and the Gas Light and Coke Company (formerly known as the
"Chartered Company") concerning the supply of gas to and the
lighting of the public lamps.
The above mentioned Company took over by an Act of
Amalgamation the Independent Gas Company's works and district.
Whatever may have been the relations between the Independent
Company and the Parish they were not renewed, and during the
year, Lady-day, 1877-1878, there existed no contract between the
Gas Company and the Parish. The object of the correspondence
above alluded to was to bring the Gas Company under some definite
obligation as to supplying gas to, lighting and extinguishing,
maintaining and repairing, the lamps, also painting and maintaining
lamp columus, brackets, &c. The correspondence resulted in a
notice from the Gas Company to the Parish to take the gas for
public lamps on the Average Meter System.
It is perhaps necessary here to say that a spirit of dissatisfaction had arisen
in somr important parishes and districts—town and country—for instance
Paddington, St. Pancras, Kensington, St. George, Hanover Square,
Nottingham, &c., as to the relations, in a public sense, between the gas suppliers
and the gas consumers, and in all these, as well as in some other places,
the Average Meter System had been adopted. I have nothing to report as to
the results of the adoption of the Average Meter System in those places, suffice
it to say that the reports which were received directly and indirectly from some
of these districts, considerably influenced the Vestry of Shoreditch as to the
coursc which it ultimately adopted.