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approved, and it was referred to a Committee, upon which I was
appointed a member, to consider the details of the measure. The Committee
approved the details of the previous Bill, adding clauses suggested by the representatives
of Islington, which gave power to local authorities to treat any combined
drain as a sewer which they had thought ought to be so treated. The Bill by
providing that any combined drains should be treated as a sewer unless it had been
approved as a sewer by the Local Authority, or the London County Council, or their
predecessors, threw upon the owners the onus of repairing all these combined drains,
which under the present law have to be treated as sewers. The conference approved
the bill in this form, and steps were taken for it to be introduced again into Parliament.
A proposal made by the Shoreditch delegates upon the instruction of the Vestry
that the law should be simplified by providing that all drains laid on private property
including connection with sewers should be the private property of the owners,
repairable by them, whilst all other drains laid under the highways should be treated
as sewers, was submitted to the conference, but only received the support of the
minority, and was not adopted.
It is certain that the present complicated definitions of drain and sewer require
to be simplified in some such way as that above proposed, so that laymen may know
what is drain and what is sewer without having to seek legal opinion upon the details
of every case.
(c) BUTLER'S CHARITY.
On the 14th June, 1897, the Parliamentary Committee considered the draft of the
proposed scheme for the future regulation of this charity, providing that the income of
the charity was to be equally divided between 12 parishes (of which Shoreditch was one)
for the benefit of children attending the public elementary schools, the scheme providing
for the award of exhibitions of the yearly value not exceeding £20, nor less than £5,
and in the placing out of apprentices to suitable trades, the cost not exceeding £30,
nor less than £10, and provision was made for five ex-officio and four co-optative
trustees. The Vestry on the recommendation of the Parliamentary Committee
resolved to represent to the Charity Commissioners that the scheme should be amended
by providing that the trustees to be appointed should be representatives of the ratepayers,
and that in the selection of schools for the exhibition preference should be
given to such institutions supported by the municipal authority, so that in Shoreditch
the Vestry's muncipal and technical school might be selected. The Commissioners
replied on the 18th January, 1898, that in accordance with the system under which
the Charity had been governed for many years the Commissioners were unable on
the present occasion to place it on a representative basis, having regard to the large
numbers of Parishes equally interested in the appropriation of its benefits, and whilst
they hesitated to limit the discretion of the trustees confined to the Shoreditch
Charity and the Vestry's Municipal and Technical School they pointed out that it
was within the power of the trustees themselves to adopt such a course if satisfactory