Leeds Corporation, 1835-1905: a history of its environmental, social and administrative services

This thesis examines the growth of local government services provided by the corporation of Leeds between 1835 and 1905. At the beginning of the period, the newly-established reformed corporation was assigned a very limited role in the government of the community which was practically confined to the management and finance of the police force. But over the subsequent seventy years its range of activities widened considerably and by the early twentieth century its policies had exerted a major influence upon the urban environment. Included in this survey are public health; public amenities, such as markets, parks, public libraries, and baths; municipal utilities, namely water, gas, tramways and electricity; slum clearance; labour relations and public assistance schemes for the unemployed; and those aspects of the regulation of private enterprise which were within the province of local government. The introduction outlines the structure of local government in the eighteen thirties, and chapter one then examines the government of Leeds by the council, highway surveyors and the improvement commission up to 1842, the date at which the municipality became responsible for the administration of the new improvement act. The next chapter con-siders the activities of the council over the following twenty years, and chapter three assesses the uneven, and in many ways disappointing achievement of these years and suggests reasons for this. In the post-1865 period the arrangement of chapters is thematic rather than chronological. Chapter four is concerned with public health over the forty years up to 1905, and chapter five with the marked expansion of public enterprise which occurred in the same period. Chapter six deals with a subject which was of no significance in municipal policy before the mid-sixties, namely the 'housing problem' and slum clearance. Chapter seven contains a survey of labour relations and municipal unemployment programmes in the later decades of the period, and chapter eight examines some aspects of finance and administration over the whole seventy years. In the last chapter we consider some general questions of motivation.