Gloucester, 1835-1985: City government

City Government

Under the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 (fn. 1) the city was enlarged to cover the same area as the parliamentary borough, which included the Spa and an additional part of Barton Street. (fn. 2) The corporation's powers were vested in a council comprising 18 councillors, of whom six went out of office each year, six aldermen, of whom three were elected triennially in rotation by the council, and a mayor, elected annually by the council from among its members. The city was divided into three electoral wards, each represented by six councillors. (fn. 3) As a county of itself Gloucester retained one sheriff, chosen annually by the council. The city also retained, by royal grant in 1836, (fn. 4) a court of quarter sessions, with a recorder appointed no longer by the council but by the Crown. The council appointed a clerk of the peace and a coroner. The city's magistrates, nominated under a separate commission of the peace in 1836, (fn. 5) had their own clerk and in 1837 moved their petty sessions from the Tolsey to the Shire Hall. (fn. 6) The court of requests or conscience continued to be held and became a country court under the Small Debts Act of 1846. (fn. 7) The reformed corporation had a limited role in local government. Public services such as water supply, gas supply, and street lighting remained outside its control, as did supervision of street repairs and cleansing. (fn. 8) The almshouses and several other charities administered by the old corporation came under the control of newly appointed municipal charity trustees in 1836. The trustees, though many were council members, acted independently and in the 1840s and 1850s succeeded in several claims against the corporation. The corporation's refusal in 1844 to surrender the Crypt grammar school, which it had retained, led to a Chancery suit and, following a compromise of 1852, the trustees obtained control. (fn. 9)

The Municipal Corporations Act entitled 892 people to vote in civic elections in Gloucester, (fn. 10) and the municipal electorate in 1843 and 1851 numbered 1,158 and 1,366 respectively. (fn. 11) The first election under the Act, held in 1835 against a background of disunity among the Whigs or Liberals, ended the exclusion from office of the Tories or Conservatives. Only nine members of the old council stood as candidates; six, including the retiring mayor, were defeated, and of the three returned only David Mowbray Walker, owner of the Gloucester Journal, had been an alderman. The electors chose thirteen Conservatives and five Liberals, and the former consolidated their advantage by almost total domination of the new aldermanic bench. (fn. 12) In contrast the new charity trustees represented a balance of political interests and the six magistrates appointed under the Act, all city men, were drawn equally from both factions. (fn. 13) Despite the wholesale change of personnel the new council made few significant innovations in civic affairs. Henry Hooper Wilton remained town clerk but was replaced as treasurer by William Matthews. Many other officials, including ceremonial officers, retained their positions and salaries. The town clerk was given a salary of £200, the treasurer £150, and the recorder £100. The new council, which appointed a high steward as before, abolished only the post of night bellman. (fn. 14) The civic ceremony of perambulating the city's boundaries continued, (fn. 15) but the custom of presenting provisions to the assize judges and lamprey pies to the king, bishop, high steward, town clerk, and recorder was ended. (fn. 16) The mayors of the new corporation were chosen from both councillors and aldermen. H.H. Wilton, partner in the largest solicitors' practice in the area, continued his wide involvement in city government after 1835. As town clerk and from 1849 as clerk to the local board of health he was energetic on the corporation's behalf, (fn. 17) and among other offices he held were those of clerk of the peace and clerk and treasurer to the municipal charity trustees. He gave up public office and private practice in 1851. (fn. 18)

Apart from the payment of its officials and the management of its property, financial demands on the new corporation were few. Its main duties were in the enforcement of law and order, notably in the provision of a city police force, which cost £851 in its first full year. Another major burden was the maintenance of the city gaol and lock-up in Southgate Street. (fn. 19) For a few years the council superseded the magistrates in regulating the gaol, and as the building was unsuitable on the grounds of size, security, and sanitation convicts were sent to the county gaol when accommodation there allowed. (fn. 20) The city gaol was closed in 1858. (fn. 21) The police force did not contain lawlessness, (fn. 22) and the council, unwilling to add to its financial commitments, did little to improve policing. In 1846 it dismissed a proposal for a police station in Archdeacon Street, a notoriously turbulent area. (fn. 23) The failings of the police service, which was described as 'rotten from beginning to end', and the prospect of financial support from central government convinced the council of the benefits of a merger of its force with that of the county in 1859. (fn. 24) Police salaries remained an item of considerable expenditure after that date. Other regular charges on the borough fund (fn. 25) were charities vested in the corporation, the city's contribution to the asylum at Wotton, until the late 1840s the contract (fn. 26) for repairing streets maintained by the corporation, and until the mid 1860s the tontine organized by the old corporation in the mid 1780s to fund the building of markets. (fn. 27)

Much of the corporation's income was supplied by rents, renewal fines, and tolls. (fn. 28) The income from the tolls, which were farmed, fluctuated and the corporation occasionally had difficulty in leasing them. (fn. 29) The most lucrative were those of the markets, particularly the cattle market after its improvement in the early 1860s. (fn. 30) The corn exchange opened in 1857 provided an income in rents for stands. The other tolls became less profitable from the middle of the century, the weighing machine in Upper Quay Street being abandoned in 1848 and the collection of wheelage and driftage ceasing in 1867. (fn. 31) Decline in the value of the quay tolls was not reversed by the abolition in 1874 of the exemption enjoyed by freemen of the city and residents of the duchy of Lancaster. (fn. 32) Both groups continued to be exempt from toll in the cattle market, the privilege of the latter being protected until 1958. (fn. 33) The corporation took the market and quay tolls in hand in 1888. (fn. 34) Before 1875 it also derived a small income from its management of the freemen's common rights.

As traditional sources of income did not meet the new corporation's financial obligations, from 1836 the council imposed a borough rate, collected with the poor rate by the overseers of the parishes and hamlets. (fn. 35) The borough fund was nevertheless usually run at a deficit, and in the 20 years following reform the corporation occasionally sold property to raise income. During that period legal fees and other payments arising from claims, among others, by officers of the old corporation for loss of office and by the municipal charity trustees added to the financial burdens on the corporation. In the mid 1850s it paid the charity trustees over £11,925, including rents taken between 1844 and 1852 from the Crypt school lands, which it relinquished in 1857. (fn. 36) The corporation also spent nearly £8,000 in an unsuccessful suit to obtain £200,000 from the executors of James Wood (d. 1836). Its claim, based on alleged codicils to Wood's will, was dismissed in the House of Lords in 1847. In 1844 the corporation had declined to abandon its action and accept £25,000. (fn. 37) After the discovery of errors in the treasurer's accounts the council in 1851 ordered an audit from the time the corporation was reformed. The treasurer's death a few days later delayed the examination of his books. (fn. 38)

The claims of the freemen to common rights were the cause of many disputes, particularly with the corporation, and in 1848 the freemen appointed a committee to look after their interests. (fn. 39) Later a few freemen, mostly butchers and cattle dealers, exercised common rights in Oxlease, Portham, and Town Ham on Alney Island and in Archdeacon Meadow, Little Meadow, and Meanham (later St. Catherine's Meadow) on the north-west side of Gloucester. In 1875 the corporation transferred the management of the meadows to the freemen's committee, though the appointment of the hayward remained with the corporation. The disputes between the corporation and freemen were finally resolved in 1899 and the corporation, which resumed the management of the meadows, extinguished the freemen's rights in Oxlease and Town Ham in 1900 and, following its purchase of the land, in Portham, Little Meadow, and the part of Archdeacon's Meadow south of the railway in 1901. Under an award of 1901 the corporation paid the freemen £7,095 (fn. 40) which was invested for a charity, known under a Scheme of 1906 as the Freemen's Compensation Fund. (fn. 41) In 1931 the common rights in that part of St. Catherine's Meadow needed for a bypass road were extinguished, and the freemen surrendered their remaining common rights in 1940 and 1942. (fn. 42)

Statutory bodies other than the corporation retained a role in the government of the city after 1835. Some were ineffective, notably the parish surveyors appointed to superintend street repair and cleansing. (fn. 43) Administration of poor relief passed in 1835 from the corporation of the governor and guardians of the poor to the board of guardians of the newly formed Gloucester union, which also included all the suburbs and a large rural area beyond. (fn. 44) The new guardians built a workhouse off London Road in the years 1837–8 to designs by G. G. Scott and W. B. Moffatt. (fn. 45) The building was encroached on by the railway several times, including in 1850 when a new infirmary was built. (fn. 46) To ease the plight of vagrants in the city, the board of guardians continued the policy of supplying food and overnight accommodation in lodging houses until 1873, when it erected a block of casual or tramp wards and instituted a regime of hard work in return for food and shelter. (fn. 47) Under the Public Health Act of 1872 the board of guardians acted as sanitary authority in the suburbs outside the city boundary. (fn. 48) The former poor-relief corporation, which demolished its workhouse in Quay Street in 1839, (fn. 49) used the rents from its land at Longford until 1869 to reduce the burden on parishes in the old part of the city of poor rates levied by the board of guardians. (fn. 50) Among other rates collected by parishes and hamlets within the city were those levied before 1865 by the former poor-relief corporation for lighting the old part of Gloucester and by the improvement commissioners. (fn. 51) Under the Extraparochial Places Act of 1857 Littleworth and the city part of Pool Meadow became civil parishes, as did South Hamlet, which was mostly in the county. Anomalies in the boundaries of the civil parishes were removed in the mid 1880s. (fn. 52)

Local government in the later 1830s and 1840s was unequal to the needs of Gloucester with its growing population and commerce. Little was done to improve sanitary conditions, even in the squalid courts and lanes of the Island and Archdeacon Street areas where cholera had been rife in 1832. (fn. 53) In 1847 the death rate in those districts was higher than elsewhere in Gloucester. The use of the Severn and of streams, notably the Sud brook and Twyver, as sewers remained the greatest danger to public health, particularly in the areas liable to flood, which included most of the poorer housing. A Board of Health inquiry carried out in 1848 revealed poor sanitary conditions throughout the city, including the Spa. Adequate drainage and sewerage were lacking, and cesspools and privies were numerous. In Clare Street one privy was shared by c. 13 houses. The water supplied from Robins Wood Hill by a private company was pure but most domestic needs were supplied by wells contaminated by seepage from cesspools and dirty streets. The squalor was worse and life expectancy shorter in the suburbs where much of the newer housing was located. Because of the conditions rents in Oxford Street, which comprised better houses, were lowered to attract tenants. (fn. 54) The keeping of pigs by householders was an additional nuisance. (fn. 55) From 1847 the corporation, prompted by the threat of another cholera epidemic, attempted to improve conditions, (fn. 56) but until 1849, when it was constituted as the local board of health for the city, (fn. 57) it lacked effective powers to deal with sanitary matters and also to undertake the street repairs necessitated by increased traffic. Most burial grounds were full by 1848, (fn. 58) and the corporation, with the concurrence of the parish vestries, acquired powers as a burial board for the city in 1856 and opened a cemetery the following year. (fn. 59)

The assumption of the powers of a local board of health greatly increased the corporation's part in city government. The council preserved the distinction between its old and new functions in its committees and finances, and it first combined the offices of surveyor to the local board and city chamberlain in 1855. (fn. 60) The most pressing tasks for the corporation were the construction of a sewerage and drainage system and the provision of enough water for domestic use and flushing drains. Sewers were laid between 1853 and 1855, and to ensure the system's efficiency the corporation in 1854 purchased the water undertaking supplying the city and surrounding area and altered the supply to the public conduit in Southgate Street. Measures were taken to increase the city's water supply, upon which ever greater demands were placed, and the construction of works at Great Witcombe in the later 1850s and early 1860s was a major project. The corporation, which as a board of health became responsible for street repair and cleansing undertook few road improvements apart from the gradual macadamization of the city's streets, (fn. 61) but, to ease traffic congestion in the central area, in 1854 it built a road (later Priory Road) along the course of Dockham ditch between lower Westgate Street and St. Catherine Street. (fn. 62) Among its other public works was the creation of a park in the early 1860s. (fn. 63)

The improvements carried out by the corporation after 1847 were limited and too late to prevent outbreaks of cholera in 1849 and 1854. In 1849, when the disease returned to the slums of the Island and Archdeacon Street with their polluted water supplies, nearly 100 people died and the burial ground at Longford was reopened. (fn. 64) The 1854 outbreak, which began in the county gaol, was much less serious. (fn. 65) Although a reduction in the death rate for both the city and suburbs was reported in 1858, many nuisances prejudicial to public health were not removed, notably in the slums in the west of the city; St. Mary de Lode was the parish with the highest mortality. (fn. 66) A petition for the establishment of public baths and wash-houses was presented to the mayor in 1846, (fn. 67) but none were opened for many years and few people used the baths at the spa pump room, taken over by the corporation in 1861. (fn. 68) Air pollution by industry had become a problem by 1861. (fn. 69)

The corporation's powers as local board of health were extended by its acquisition of those of other statutory bodies and continued by its constitution under the Public Health Act of 1872 as sanitary authority for the city. (fn. 70) The improvement commissioners, who expended little energy on public works, continued to meet until 1860. (fn. 71) Their powers were transferred to the corporation in 1865, when the latter also became responsible for the city's street lighting. (fn. 72) The former poor-relief corporation, stripped of its lighting functions, ran a school until 1899 and was dissolved in 1907. (fn. 73) The lighting commissioners for the suburbs provided street lights until at least the early 1950s. (fn. 74) The city corporation financed its activities as board of health and later as urban sanitary authority by levying a general district rate, (fn. 75) collected, unlike the borough rate, by its own officers. (fn. 76) In 1853 it raised a separate highway rate. (fn. 77) Water rates or charges were collected from 1854 by the manager of the Robins Wood Hill works and from 1856 with the general district rate. (fn. 78) Costly permanent works were funded by borrowing, and the waterworks accounted for the bulk of the loan debt. The debt and loan charges on the sewerage system were met by a special district rate. Pool Meadow, which was not served by the sewerage and water undertakings, paid only a general district rate from 1853, and between 1859 and 1870 only a highway rate. (fn. 79)

The Conservatives retained a numerical advantage in the council only until 1838. They won the mayoral and aldermanic elections of that year, conducted acrimoniously on party lines and with doubtful legality, but the new aldermen did not take part in council business (fn. 80) and were unseated in 1840 in favour of the Liberals' candidates. (fn. 81) The Liberals, who had gained control of the council in 1839, (fn. 82) included several nonconformists (fn. 83) but apparently few radicals, and their principal leader until the mid 1850s was D. M. Walker. (fn. 84) With their larger representation a few more former members of the old council came back into city government. (fn. 85) Party rivalry frequently surfaced in the mayoral elections but was absent from the choice of a Conservative in 1848. In 1854, when the Conservatives became the majority party, there was a particularly bitter byelection, and the council elected a Liberal as mayor to avoid party conflict but divided in its choice of sheriff. (fn. 86) In municipal elections seats were often filled without contests but such agreements were occasionally rejected by members of both parties. (fn. 87) Contests were usually accompanied by corruption, those of 1853 taking place, according to the Gloucester Journal, 'after the distribution of large quantities of beer and the incentives usually given to voters on these occasions.' (fn. 88) In the early 1850s parliamentary elections and concern about increasing corporation expenditure apparently fuelled party rivalry. (fn. 89) The Conservatives, who sold some corporation property to raise funds, paid the corporation's debts to the charity trustees and, in addition to board of health and burial board works, built a new produce market and a corn exchange, improved the cattle market, (fn. 90) and constructed part of Denmark Road outside the city. Under the leadership of Thomas Robinson, an ambitious and ruthless politician who became a councillor in 1858, the Liberals dominated the council again from 1865 and accused their opponents of mismanagement, particularly in the construction of the Great Witcombe waterworks and in funding the cattle market improvement by the issue of debentures. (fn. 91) Conservative representation between 1869 and 1871 was reduced to a single councillor, John Ward. (fn. 92) The Liberals favoured economy with efficiency and generally avoided costly projects. They later portrayed that period as one of financial recovery. (fn. 93) By 1871 they had redeemed all the debentures (fn. 94) and between 1870 and 1874 they reduced the corporation's loan debt from £97,839 to £88,607. (fn. 95) Their most important achievements came after 1874 when they obtained an extension of the municipal boundary as a first step towards ameliorating conditions in the sprawling suburbs. (fn. 96)

The hamlets outside the city, where much of Gloucester's growth took place in the mid 19th century, lacked powers to deal with the problems of speculative building. (fn. 97) Sewers laid in the late 1850s and early 1860s by the corporation reduced the Sud brook nuisance south of the city (fn. 98) but conditions in the suburban terraced streets were generally squalid. To improve matters Barton St. Mary and Barton St. Michael took the powers of local boards of health for most of the south-eastern suburbs in 1863 and Kingsholm St. Catherine took similar powers for part of the northern suburbs in 1865. The major task for the boards was to construct sewerage and drainage systems, which they financed by borrowing and had completed by 1867, (fn. 99) but they had little impact on sanitary conditions. (fn. 100) The Barton boards, which acted in concert and shared officers, exercised no control over new housing. (fn. 101) The Kingsholm St. Catherine board, which put pressure on the corporation to reduce pollution of the Twyver in the city, (fn. 102) lacked adequate funds and its activity was further hampered by the fragmented area it covered. The complexity of hamlet and parish boundaries before the mid 1880s hindered effective measures for regulating the layout and repair of suburban streets. (fn. 103) In 1864 the city corporation acting as a landowner took legal action to compel Kingsholm St. Catherine to improve part of Denmark Road. (fn. 104) Responsibility for highway maintenance in the suburbs was exercised by several authorities, including the three boards and the Gloucester highway district formed in 1863. (fn. 105) The trusts administering the turnpike roads leading from the city lapsed in the 1870s. (fn. 106) The county council took responsibility for main roads in 1889 and the Gloucester rural district for lesser highways in 1899. (fn. 107)

By an Act of 1874 Kingsholm, part of Wotton, outer Barton Street, Tredworth, part of Stroud Road, and part of Bristol Road came within the municipal boundary, which became coterminous with that of the enlarged parliamentary borough. The county prison and asylum, though within the extended boundary, remained outside the municipality. Membership of the city council was increased to 36, including nine aldermen, and a fourth electoral ward, which returned nine councillors, was created in the south-eastern part of the city. The three suburban boards of health were abolished (fn. 108) and the corporation shouldered their loan debts and discharged the debt on the Kingsholm St. Catherine board's non-capital expenditure. (fn. 109) As a matter of urgency the council extended the city's sewers and water mains and repaired footways in the added areas, where it levied an additional district rate to pay for those works. The improvements greatly increased the corporation's loan debt, which between 1874 and 1878 rose by over 45 per cent to £128,452. (fn. 110) The differential rating of the new parts of the city encouraged development beyond the boundary, (fn. 111) where the need to control growth and improve services led the corporation to seek a further extension of the boundary at the end of the century. (fn. 112) The city was enlarged in 1900 but the increase in area, from 1,441 a. to 2,315 a. by the addition of land in the Coney Hill, Saintbridge, Tuffley, and Bristol Road areas to the south and on the west side of the canal below Llanthony, was much smaller than the corporation had wanted. The old electoral wards were abolished and the city was divided into ten new wards, each represented by three councillors; the number of aldermen was increased to ten. (fn. 113)

The council remained under the influence of the Liberal Thomas Robinson until 1886. His leadership and use of municipal patronage sharply divided the parties (fn. 114) and most municipal elections were hotly disputed. An agreement by the parties to avoid contests after the 1874 boundary extension was quickly overturned and Conservative members boycotted council committees in retaliation. (fn. 115) Bribery remained ingrained in elections, and in 1880 candidates sponsored by an electoral reform association received few votes and failed to defeat councillors guilty of corruption in the parliamentary election earlier that year. (fn. 116) The Conservatives gained control of the council in 1886 with promises to reduce rates, particularly in the newest parts of the city, and by electing aldermen from outside the council they not only secured their majority but also unseated Robinson. (fn. 117) He reappeared as a councillor between 1889 and 1895. (fn. 118) After 1886 the council was much more active in initiating public works and providing services. Although changes of political control became more frequent, with the Liberals regaining power in 1889 and the Conservatives in 1894, both parties recognized the need for greater municipal enterprise. (fn. 119) As a result the corporation's loan debt, which had been gradually reduced from 1878, rose steadily after 1887 when it was £107,992. (fn. 120) To reduce the mounting burden of debt and interest repayments the corporation in 1895 consolidated most loans by an issue of £158,000 stock, which also funded the construction of new waterworks and other improvements. (fn. 121) In another reform the differential rating of the areas added in 1874 was ended in 1894. (fn. 122)

The corporation's range of activities widened in the late 19th and early 20th century and the council obtained from parliament several extensions of its powers. (fn. 123) In 1889 the city, as a county of itself, assumed county borough status and the council took over some administrative functions from the magistrates. (fn. 124) In 1896 the city took in the county prison and the council acquired the powers of the city's civil parishes, which were consolidated to form the civil parish of Gloucester. (fn. 125) For the new parish the council appointed four overseers from among its members and employed an assistant overseer. (fn. 126) The change equalized rating throughout the city. (fn. 127) The overseers' duties lapsed in 1927 when rating powers for poor relief in the city passed to the corporation. (fn. 128)

Gloucester's growing population increased pressure upon public services, notably the water and sewerage undertakings. (fn. 129) Despite improvements the sewers became overloaded in the early 20th century by extensions of mains to new parts of the city. By installing meters to detect waste in 1883 the council ensured a constant water supply until the early 1890s (fn. 130) and postponed heavy expenditure on new works. Additional works completed in 1896 and 1911 tapped sources some way from the city. As revenue from water charges increased, the undertaking became a very profitable trading concern and from the mid 1880s it contributed large sums to the general district fund. (fn. 131) Other improvements included works to ease the pollution and periodic flooding of streams, particularly the Sud brook in the south. To remove one obstacle the Wishing bridge carrying Parkend Road over the brook was rebuilt and the road raised and widened in 1880. (fn. 132) Street lighting and footways were improved in the later 1880s, (fn. 133) and road widening schemes included a major project in lower Westgate Street between 1902 and 1913. (fn. 134) The corporation also carried out important works in the cattle market and at the quay, (fn. 135) and in 1896 it moved its depot to a new building at the corner of Stroud and Seymour Roads. (fn. 136)

The medical officer of health, (fn. 137) first appointed in 1873, directed his efforts towards ensuring that houses had a clean water supply and proper drainage. Connexions were made to the city water mains and flushing boxes were compulsorily installed in water-closets, but progress was slow and was not helped in the late 1880s by the poor health of the inspector of nuisances. (fn. 138) There were attempts to improve lighting and cleanliness in the worst courts and alleys (fn. 139) but a house inspection in 1892 revealed numerous sanitary defects. Many dwellings in the Bristol Road area lacked adequate sanitation until 1897 when the new waterworks replaced a private supply. In the south-eastern part of the city gas from the old sewers posed a threat to public health. The council's policy for removing the nuisance in the early 1880s relied on property owners to connect drains to the new city sewers, but it was ineffective and in 1885 over 1,000 houses were connected to the new system at public expense. (fn. 140) Several ventilating shafts were erected at the same time and more later. In 1894 the corporation obtained extra powers to deal with the problem throughout the city of pockets of slum dwellings. Orders taken out against individual properties resulted principally in repairs in the Longsmith Street, London Road, and Barton Street areas. Following the Housing Act of 1909 the council was more active in enforcing improvements but, though many dwellings were demolished, there were no large-scale clearances and the work was interrupted by the First World War. (fn. 141)

From 1873 the council also acted as port sanitary authority in the docks at Gloucester and Sharpness and along the canal. The city supplied 45 per cent of the cost of that work and the riparian sanitary authorities the rest. (fn. 142) As Gloucester was an inland waterway centre the inspection of boats used as dwellings was an important task for council officials. (fn. 143) In 1885 the council built cholera hospitals at both ends of the canal. (fn. 144) It was constituted permanently as port sanitary authority in 1894 and continued as port health authority under the Public Health Act of 1936. (fn. 145)

Resistance to smallpox vaccination was marked among Gloucester's poor by 1858 when 69 people died from the disease there. (fn. 146) A serious outbreak of the disease lasted from May 1873 to February 1875 with 151 deaths. (fn. 147) In response the corporation built an isolation hospital in 1874, (fn. 148) but its inadequate design and the level of charges, which deterred people from seeking admission, rendered it ineffective in halting the spread of infections. Proposals for the urban and rural sanitary authorities to join in building a more suitable isolation hospital for both the city and suburbs came to nothing. (fn. 149) From the mid 1870s a local society led by Samuel Bland, proprietor of the newly founded Citizen newspaper, gained wider support for the anti-vaccination cause, and in 1887 the board of guardians suspended the enforcement of compulsory vaccination. (fn. 150) An outbreak of smallpox in 1895 assumed grave proportions in February 1896 when the disease spread among children at schools in New Street and Widden Street and then to many households in the southern part of the city. Children were moved from the union workhouse to Tuffley, schools in the infected areas were closed, and temporary buildings were put up at the isolation and cholera hospitals, but through the council's lack of organization infected houses went uninspected and victims were not isolated. The death rate was highest among patients in the isolation hospital. (fn. 151) The city was virtually in quarantine and the assize courts and county quarter sessions were transferred to Cheltenham. (fn. 152) In March the board of guardians reversed its policy and began enforcing vaccination, (fn. 153) and in April local opinion prevented the use of the East End tabernacle in Derby Road as a hydropathic hospital. (fn. 154) Unvaccinated children were for a time excluded from the schools, which were reopened in May (fn. 155) when the epidemic began to abate. The outbreak, which ended in July, was confined to the city, and children aged under 10 years accounted for 706 of the 1,979 notified cases and for 280 of the 434 fatalities. The council was severely criticized for its handling of the epidemic, specially for its hospital management. (fn. 156)

After the epidemic the strength of the anti-vaccination movement was reflected in elections to the city council, board of guardians, and school board and worked largely to the Liberals' advantage. The Conservatives lost control of the council for a while but the balance between the parties was complicated by divisions among the Liberals and by the election of several independents as anti-vaccinationists. (fn. 157) The latter included from 1898 Walter Robert Hadwen, a doctor and ardent anti-vivisectionist, who came to Gloucester to champion the anti-vaccination cause during the outbreak and remained as its leader. (fn. 158) From 1890 the Labour movement had its own voice in the Gloucester Trades' Council. (fn. 159) In the municipal elections of that year the trades' council helped in the defeat of the industrialist James Platt by Walter Madge, (fn. 160) who was the secretary of a Conservative working men's friendly society, (fn. 161) but in 1891 it failed to persuade the city council to require its contractors to pay recognized trade union wages. (fn. 162) Organized Labour made some advances, mostly by co-operation with Liberals, and from the mid 1890s it had limited representation on the city council, board of guardians, and school board. Abel Joseph Evans, local secretary of the dockers' union, sat as a councillor intermittently between 1896 and 1905 and was particularly associated with educational policy. After his estrangement from the trades' council he was elected to the city council as a Liberal from 1906. He became a magistrate the same year. (fn. 163)

In the elections of 1900, which were for all the seats on the enlarged council, the wards returned 15 Conservatives, 14 Liberals, and 1 independent, W. R. Hadwen. The Conservatives secured the mayoralty and aldermanries but the Liberals took control in 1901 when a councillor and the aldermen were unseated on petition, the former for involvement in a corporation contract, and the mayor resigned. (fn. 164) Although there were no clear differences between the municipal policies of the two parties, elections were keenly contested and sometimes corrupt in the early 20th century. The period was one of municipal progress, notably in the purchase and electrification of the city's tramways and in education, but the Liberals' popularity waned as city rates rose. After the Conservatives regained control of the council in 1909 party feeling in municipal matters declined. Because the Liberals were unable to field candidates fewer elections were contested and the Conservatives remained the majority party for many years. (fn. 165) One of their leaders, James Bruton, who was knighted in 1916, was elected mayor nine times between 1908 and 1919. (fn. 166)

The Education Act of 1870, which required elementary schooling to be available for every child, sparked off much debate in the city. The creation of a school board was initially favoured by the council, but encountered strong opposition from churchmen and ratepayers and, though the closure or reduction in size of several schools for want of funds illustrated the limitations of the voluntary system, was delayed (fn. 167) until introduced compulsorily in 1876. (fn. 168) Most of the triennial elections of the board's nine members were contested, and the main battle was between church and undenominational parties. The board was usually chaired by an Anglican clergyman, several times because the undenominational party, which comprised both churchmen and nonconformists, was unable to agree on a candidate. One nonconformist to occupy the chair was the Revd. John Bloomfield from 1891 until his death in 1895. The board always had several independent members, including Joseph Clay (d. 1901), who was elected from 1882 as the nominee of the co-operative society. Another trade unionist elected from 1894 was A. J. Evans, who chaired the board from 1900 when nonconformist members blocked the re-election of an Anglican clergyman. W. R. Hadwen was on the board from 1897 when he headed the poll of candidates. (fn. 169) The board, which built, with some reluctance, four large schools in the south-eastern and southern parts of the city, was dissolved when the city became the local education authority under the Education Act of 1902. (fn. 170) The city council had a limited involvement in secondary education from 1882 through its representation on the governing body of the Gloucester United Endowed Schools. Its role in technical education began in the early 1890s with financial support to classes and it assumed responsibility for such teaching in the city in 1896, when the corporation acquired the Schools of Science and Art. After 1903 education quickly became the corporation's costliest service (fn. 171) and in 1907 the mayor marked the opening of new schools in Derby Road with a plea for economy. (fn. 172)

The wider range of services provided by the council from the 1890s included a mortuary, (fn. 173) public baths, (fn. 174) playing fields, a museum, and a library. (fn. 175) The fire service became a municipal undertaking in 1912. For electricity supply the council rejected private schemes in favour of a municipal service. Inaugurated in 1900, (fn. 176) it quickly became a profitable concern. (fn. 177) Less successful was the corporation's involvement with the city's tramways. Horse-drawn trams had been part of the internal transport services from 1879. Although companies running the undertaking had had financial difficulties the corporation bought it in 1902, relaid the lines for electric traction, and extended the system. The corporation's service, which included trams to Hucclecote on rails laid by the county council, began in 1904. (fn. 178) Burdened by heavy debt and loan charges, the undertaking made considerable demands on the city rates. (fn. 179) After the 1896 epidemic the corporation decided to build a new isolation hospital at Over. The building, which was not for smallpox victims, was delayed and before it was opened in 1903 the corporation, following a requirement of the Local Government Board, made provision for a smallpox hospital. (fn. 180) To combat the spread of tuberculosis the city council joined the county council in 1912 in a joint committee, which opened a sanatorium at Standish House in 1922 and continued its work until the advent of the National Health Service in 1948. (fn. 181)

The corporation began building houses in 1919 and had completed 280 dwellings by 1922. It provided only some of the houses needed for Gloucester's growing population and after the Housing Act of 1930 it concentrated on slum clearance and rehousing. The first clearances were in the Archdeacon Street and Island areas, and in the later 1930s there were clearances throughout the city. (fn. 182) The corporation undertook many other improvements between the wars, including the formation of the Oxbode and King's Square in the late 1920s, a bypass road, running north and east of the central area, started in the early 1930s, (fn. 183) and works at the quay and the cattle market. (fn. 184) Education remained the city's most expensive service and it underwent several reorganizations. In 1933 the corporation resumed direct responsibility for technical education, which it had relinquished in 1906, and in 1937 it assumed greater control over secondary education. (fn. 185) In 1936 a municipal airport was established in Churchdown as a joint undertaking with Cheltenham corporation. Known as Staverton airport, it was first managed by a Gloucester company which had run an airfield nearby from 1932. (fn. 186)

In attempts to plan ahead the corporation began buying up land on the outskirts of the city, (fn. 187) and in 1935 the city's area was doubled to 4,582 a., mostly by the addition of land to the east in the Cheltenham Road, Wotton, and Coney Hill areas and to the south at Matson, Tuffley, Lower Tuffley, and Podsmead. (fn. 188) The council's composition was unchanged but the wards' boundaries and names were altered. (fn. 189) Between the wars the Conservatives, whose leaders included John Owen Roberts, (fn. 190) remained the largest party group on the council. Although a former Liberal, William Levason Edwards, failed to retain his council seat as a Labour candidate at a byelection in 1919, the Labour party won two seats at the municipal elections later that year. (fn. 191) For many years Labour party representation, which by 1922 had risen to five councillors, suffered because of a lack of aldermen. From 1925 the Conservatives and Liberals worked jointly against Labour (fn. 192) and supplied alternate mayors until 1932 when Edwards became the city's first Labour mayor. (fn. 193) There were six Labour councillors in 1936. Interest in municipal elections waned in the early 1930s, and in 1935 only one ward was contested. Interest was revived the following year by a ratepayers' association, which won three seats. (fn. 194)

The most serious threat to public health between the wars was an outbreak of mild smallpox in 1923. The medical officer of health, who later resigned, believed it to be a chickenpox epidemic but the corporation, once advised by the Ministry of Health that it was smallpox, took prompt and efficient action. Additional medical help was engaged and a temporary hospital opened. Of 698 smallpox cases notified in 1923 only three were fatal. (fn. 195) From the 1920s the corporation supplied a range of health services, including motor ambulances. It relied on voluntary agencies to discharge maternity and child welfare services and it provided a maternity hospital from 1940. (fn. 196) In the late 19th and early 20th century general hospital accommodation in the city was divided between the Gloucester Infirmary and the poor-law union infirmary. In 1912 the board of guardians started a new infirmary opposite the workhouse and opened a new block of casual wards to increase overnight accommodation for wayfarers. (fn. 197) In 1930, on the abolition of the board of guardians, the city corporation became responsible for poor relief in the city, (fn. 198) and a joint committee of the council and of other local authorities in south-western England was established to deal with vagrancy. (fn. 199) The corporation's new duties involved a range of welfare services, and it took over the former union buildings, including the infirmary and two children's homes, and an estate in Tuffley. (fn. 200)

In its increasingly complex finances (fn. 201) the corporation continued to distinguish its functions as a sanitary authority until 1929, when the borough and general district funds and rates were consolidated. (fn. 202) Spending on police, education, and poor relief was covered largely by government grants, and non-capital expenditure on other municipal services was met out of the rates. The water undertaking and the markets yielded a surplus in relief of the rates. (fn. 203) In 1929 the corporation replaced most of the tramways with a motor bus service, (fn. 204) which did not require support from the rates, (fn. 205) and in 1936, in a major change of policy, it transferred the running of the bus service, which covered the city and outlying villages, to the Bristol Tramways & Carriage Co. (renamed the Bristol Omnibus Co. in 1957). (fn. 206) The water and electricity undertakings, which were both supplying outlying rural areas by the Second World War, continued to trade at a profit. In 1936 the corporation collaborated with Cheltenham corporation in a joint water undertaking, and in 1943 it opened a new electricity generating station. (fn. 207) Education, transport, public health, and the water, sewerage, and electricity undertakings required heavy capital investment in the early 20th century. The corporation's loan debt rose from £195, 551 in 1900 to £360, 334 in 1904 and to £456,775 in 1914. After 1918 there was also heavy capital expenditure on housing and roads and by 1940 the loan debt had reached £2,097, 334. The corporation's debts were reorganized by further issues of stock in 1925 and 1929. (fn. 208)

After the Second World War Gloucester's growth was marked by several extensions of the city boundary. In 1951 land at Elmbridge to the east and at Lower Tuffley and Netheridge to the south was added and Wotton Vill, the island of the county formed by the Wotton asylum, was absorbed to give the city 5, 2/2 a. (fn. 209) In 1957 the city took in 22 a. between Matson and Sneedham's Green to the south, (fn. 210) and in 1967 it added Longlevens and parts of Longford and Innsworth to the north, much of Barnwood and Hucclecote to the east, meadow land to the west, and Hempsted to the south-west to give it, after a minor adjustment, 8,239 a. (3,334 ha.). That extension moved the western boundary to the Severn's western channel and the eastern boundary to major roads, of which the Birmingham - Bristol motorway opened in 1971. The enlarged city was divided into eleven wards, each represented by three councillors, and the number of aldermen was increased to eleven. (fn. 211) The aldermanic bench was abolished at local government reorganization in 1974 when Gloucester lost its status as a county borough and became a district. It kept the title of city together with its mayor and sheriff. (fn. 212) Labour party representation on the council included several aldermen after 1945, when it held 17 of the 40 seats. The Liberals, who worked jointly with the Conservatives in the 1945 elections, were reduced to a handful (fn. 213) and for a period were without representatives. (fn. 214) Labour was in control between 1957 and 1966 (fn. 215) and the Conservatives, who gained power in 1968, won a majority of the seats in the elections for the district council, taking over city government in 1974. (fn. 216)

From 1945 corporation expenditure grew rapidly as services were provided in new parts of the city and as older parts were redeveloped. Education services, which expanded under the Education Act of 1944, remained the largest single item in non-capital expenditure. New health and welfare services were created; (fn. 217) the corporation had opened three old people's homes, not all within the city, by 1954 and ran a residential nursery at Wallsworth Hall in Sandhurst from 1944 until 1953. (fn. 218) There was heavy capital expenditure on new school buildings, roads, and housing, which included new estates on the fringes of the city and, in the early 1960s, houses for sale. (fn. 219) A new sewerage system with a treatment plant was constructed. (fn. 220) Both the city and county library services catered for the areas of new housing. (fn. 221) The corporation's loan debt had risen by 1954 to over £6,300,000, more than half of which had been incurred in housing schemes, (fn. 222) and by 1960 to over £10,300,000, (fn. 223) and in 1970 its borrowing powers were increased. (fn. 224) The council's policy of making loans to house purchasers brought problems as arrears in repayments mounted, and in 1964 the ensuing financial and political difficulties led to the retirement of the city treasurer and the resignation of the town clerk. (fn. 225)

A development plan, drawn up by the corporation and implemented from 1954, (fn. 226) aimed to improve the city's layout, reduce areas of decay, relieve traffic congestion, and provide services for the city's expanding population. The corporation, which started comprehensive redevelopment of parts of Kingsholm and lower Westgate Street, obtained further powers for making improvements in 1958. (fn. 227) For the city centre the council commissioned the architect G. A. Jellicoe to design a comprehensive plan, which was presented in 1962, but later varied its details. (fn. 228) Major public works included the completion of the bypass road (1959), the construction of an inner ring road (fn. 229) (in progress 1985), and the building of a new cattle market (1955), fire station (1956), ambulance station (1961), antenatal and child welfare clinic (1962), (fn. 230) and bus station (1962). (fn. 231) New recreational facilities included a leisure centre (1974) and a country park on Robins Wood Hill. (fn. 232) Two shopping centres were developed by a property company and an insurance company in collaboration with the city council. (fn. 233) In the early 1980s the council replaced the development plan by a new district plan, which with the county council's structure plan became the basis for city planning. (fn. 234)

Municipal control over some services disappeared before the 1974 local government reorganization. Electricity generation and supply and some health services, including hospitals, were removed by nationalization in 1948, the two water undertakings were merged with others in 1965, and the fire service was merged with that of the county in 1972. In 1974 the county council took over the city's structural planning, education, libraries, refuse disposal, social services, trading standards, and major highways, and separate authorities most of its health services and its water supply and sewage disposal. The city council retained responsibility for most highways and transportation and for the sewerage system, by agreements respectively with the county council and the water authority, and for planning, housing, environmental health, refuse collection, cemeteries, and leisure services. (fn. 235) Staverton airport, which from 1957 had been run by the Gloucester and Cheltenham Joint Airport Committee and before 1974 had traded at a small profit, remained in the ownership of the Gloucester and Cheltenham councils. (fn. 236)