Editing Metropolitan Board of Works (section)

==Background==
The growth of the city around the commercial [[City of London]] was continuing apace; as the [[British Empire]] grew so the [[London Docks]] had grown in trade, population sharply grew and demand for housing rose as did the building of homes. Half of the population of two of the three counties that adjoined that medieval-walled city definition were within a few miles of it. However the government of this metropolis was chaotic, with over 100 key authorities having statutory or customary powers and much overlapping territory. Specifically, providing a rate-paid service or capital improvement in a given place sometimes needed the co-ordination or consent of many of these.

In 1835 elected [[municipal borough]]s had been set up covering every major city except London. The [[City of London]], the very core of the sprawling metropolis which keeps its medieval boundaries, was untouched by the [[Municipal Corporations Act 1835]] and resisted all moves to expand its borders to include the generally poorer districts surrounding it. This meant that [[justice of the peace|commissions (justices) of the peace]] of three counties, key landowners, and powerful parish council [[vestries]] beneath them, had authority over the clearly urban area, the metropolis: Middlesex north of the Thames and west of the [[River Lea|Lea]] up to several miles from the City, Surrey to the south and south-west, and Kent as to the south east.

In 1837 an attempt was made to set up an elected authority covering the whole of the metropolis; however, the wealthier districts of [[Marylebone]] and [[Westminster]] resisted this, as some of their own local powers and low rates would have been lost. They defeated the motion. In 1854 the [[Royal Commission on the City of London| Royal Commission on the Corporation of the City of London]] proposed to divide an urban area around the City of London into seven boroughs, each represented on a Metropolitan Board of Works. This proposal was abandoned, but the next year the board of works was set up to cover all this.