ABSTRACT
Dacca's declining fortunes had reduced it by the 1830s to a noble ruin, with its overgrown Mughal palaces, gateways, bridges, tombs and mosques. Dacca had also become very unhealthy and insanitary, a condition accentuated by its physical layout and uncivic habits of its inhabitants. With poverty and decay had come apathy, and there was little indigenous leadership, no local institutions that could tackle the urban problems of Dacca. However, a new era in the history of Dacca's urban development dawned in 1840, when Magistrate Russell Moreland Skinner turned his attention to measures of urban improvement. The Dacca Municipal Committee was not established under any municipal law but was appointed by the Governor-General as chief executive of the province. Francis Bruce Simson, the officiating Commissioner of Dacca, forwarding the Committee's resolution to government on 2 April 1863, noted the serious consequences of its resignation 'in dust and general inconvenience'.
