User:Sam Blacketer/MBW

The Metropolitan Board of Works corruption scandal was a series of scandals, revealed in the Financial News newspaper in 1886, which showed how officials and some members of the Metropolitan Board of Works were using their positions to enrich themselves. After the Board itself held an incompetent inquiry, Parliament required that a Royal Commission investigate. Before this investigation concluded, the government introduced the Local Government Act 1888 which abolished the Board and instituted a directly-elected London County Council.

Political background
As an institution of local government, the Metropolitan Board of Works did not want for critics. There was a large body of opinion who were determined to replace it by a directly-elected council, and from 1882 they were organised in the London Municipal Reform League. Critics of the Board, and those in favour of London government reform, constantly sought to attack it for corruption.

The Odessa Contract
One of the most frequently mentioned incidents of corruption dated from 1864 when the Board was awarding the first contract for constructing the roadway on the Embankment, running from Westminster to Waterloo Bridge. Thirteen tenders were received, and initially the Board awarded the contract to the lowest priced contractor, Samuel Ridley. Three weeks later the Board reversed itself, cancelled the contract and awarded it instead to the third-lowest, the Furness company. The reasons for changing were twofold: first, when the Board read the letters Ridley had submitted testifying to his abilities, they seemed too vague, and most of his contracts had been in Canada. The Board's chief engineer Joseph Bazalgette looked into Ridley's background and came to the view that Ridley did not have the requisite experience. The second issue was also turned up by Bazalgette who received a confidential report from Waring Brothers, who had employed Ridley, which said that Ridley had disappeared with £100 intended to pay wages to his employees, which he had not paid.

The change of contractor astonished Ridley who was determined to get the work returned to him; he quickly formed a partnership with one of the higher-bidding contractors, of unquestioned integrity. The Board refused to change its mind, and Ridley then went public with an accusation that Bazalgette was corruptly linked with Furness, for whom he had helped obtain a concession for works in Odessa and from whom he had received commission.

The Odessa affair could easily be made to look suspicious, especially since Bazalgette could not disclose Waring Brothers' claims publicly, and feeling in the Board was that Bazalgette had been indiscreet in getting too closely involved with a contractor. However, when recommending that the contract be taken away from Ridley, Bazalgette had initially recommended the second lowest contractor – who had quibbled with aspects of the contract and refused to take it. He had then advocated readvertising; the Board had overruled him and decided to appoint Furness.

Pavilion
The essence of the main scandal arose from the purchase by the MBW of the old Pavilion music hall in Piccadilly Circus in 1879, when the site was thought necessary for the construction of Shaftesbury Avenue. As the street was still in the early stage, the site was leased to music hall proprietor R.E. Villiers for the time being. In addition to his regular payment to the Board, Villiers paid a small sub rosa amount to F.W. Goddard, who was Chief Valuer for the Board, for favorable treatment.

In 1883, it seemed likely that demolition of the site for road construction was likely to take place, and Villiers met with Goddard and Thomas James Robertson (Assistant Surveyor) to ensure that the remainder of the site was granted to him for a new Pavilion. They agreed to help him, in return for one corner of the site being a public house under the landlordship of W.W. Grey. Grey was in fact the brother of Robertson, though this was of course not immediately apparent.

In November 1884 Robertson told Villiers that the time had come to make a formal offer to the MBW to lease the site, and Villiers duly offered £2,700 ground rent per annum. The Board instructed its superintending architect, George Vulliamy, to value the site: however, Vulliamy was old and left practically all of the work to his subordinates – Goddard and Robertson (it was said by the Deputy Chairman of the Board that "Mr. Goddard and Mr. Robertson were Mr. Vulliamy"). They prepared a report valuing the site at £3,000 per annum, which Villiers immediately accepted; this was then hurriedly pushed through the Board which agreed the lease despite a higher offer of £4,000.

The site was leased off in two portions, £2,650 for the largest part, and £350 for the western corner of the site. Goddard continued to collect his extra payments from Villiers, and the western corner was transferred to Grey – who sold his existing public house on Tichborn Street and divided the £10,000 profit between Goddard and Robertson. In December 1886, Villiers sold the Pavilion, and Goddard received a total of £5,000 of the proceeds.

Subsidiary corruption
For years, vague hints had been made that the Board tended to encourage those applying for leases to employ members of the Board as architects. In particular, James Ebenezer Saunders had been appointed as chief architect on the Pavilion, and on the Grand Hotel and Metropole Hotel on Northumberland Avenue, both on land owned by the Board, and had done little actual work. Francis Hayman Fowler, although he had done much other work as a Board member, had taken money from site owners and lessees in circumstances which clearly indicated bribery.

On a more base level, the Assistant Architect at the Board, John Hebb, had responsibility for inspecting theatres for safety. He began to write to the managers of theatres with upcoming inspections to suggest that they might want to send him free tickets. Given the power of the board to close theatres, most complied. However, displeased by the inspections themselves, and by the attempt to extract gifts, the managers tended to send Hebb tickets for seats that were at the back of the house or hidden behind a pillar.

Royal Commission
The Goddard-Robertson scandal was revealed by a series of articles in the Financial News beginning on October 25, 1886. The Board itself undertook an incompetent investigation under the Chairmanship of Magheramorne, which found Robertson was "injudicious in allowing relatives to become tenants of the Board without informing the Board" but could not find anything worthy "of more severe censure". Anti-Board campaigners were not pleased and kept up the pressure. On the motion of Lord Randolph Churchill (who represented Paddington South where anti-Board feeling was at its highest), the House of Commons voted on February 16, 1888 to establish a Royal Commission to inquire into the Board.

The Commission was headed by Lord Herschell and found the main allegations of the Financial News to have been correct, and indeed understated. Some other scandals were also discovered including the corruption of architects who were members of the Board. However, the Commission repudiated the view of critics that corruption was endemic in the Board.

While the Royal Commission was still preparing its hearings, the President of the Local Government Board Charles Ritchie announced that elected County Councils were to be created throughout the United Kingdom. Almost hidden in the Bill were clauses that separated the area of the MBW from the counties of Surrey, Middlesex and Kent and created it as the County of London. This decision was in general what the anti-Board campaigners of the London Municipal Reform League had called for.

Abolition
The Metropolitan Board of Works was abolished by the Local Government Act 1888; and the London County Council had been elected on 21 January 1889, to assume its new powers on 1 April.