ABSTRACT
GEORGE JOHN SHAW-LEFEVRE (1831-1928) CAME FROM A DISTINGUISHED family of public servants. First Commissioner of Works in the 1880 and 1892 Gladstone administrations, he later became a member of the London County Council. The quotation here is interesting because it represents an early plea for the planning of London as a whole. A London Society, devoted to planning, was founded in 1912 and published a Development Plan for Greater London in 1920 (Beaufoy, 1997), but Raymond Unwin’s London Regional Planning Committee, 1929-33, died in the Depression, and Patrick Abercrombie’s Greater London Plan did not appear until nearly fifty years after 1898.
