ABSTRACT

How far the term ‘laissez-faire5 can be considered an appropriate description of the central government’s role in the Victorian economy can be debated. At the local level, however, there can be no doubt. As the nineteenth century progressed, local authorities of all kinds greatly extended both the volume and the range of their activities. In part this extension was a product of rising expectations against a background of the growing pressures of urbanisation, and it was stimulated by a widespread development of ‘civic consciousness’ after the 1860s. However much Parliament debated the rights and wrongs of their modest enough income tax demands, local rates grew steadily. Local debt grew too. In 1874-5 the proportion of local authority borrowing to the total national debt stood at just over twelve per cent. By 1896-7 the proportion was in excess of 39 per cent.1 Roughly one-third of local borrowing was raised for municipal trading-‘reproductive undertakings’ as they were termed sometimes in Parliamentary returns. For individual towns pro­ portions were sometimes much higher. In Birmingham the total debt outstanding in 1909 stood at £17*7 million and in Manchester at £23-0 million. Reproductive undertakings accounted for about 80 per cent and 71 per cent respectively of the debt.2 The growth of these municipal undertakings is the subject of the present paper, but it is worth emphasising that the whole arena of local government activity and its relation to economic and social life sorely needs more attention from economic historians. Many fine local studies exist, but on a more general level little exploration has been undertaken since the classic studies of the Webbs.3