ABSTRACT
The links between parish and parliamentary politics are perhaps best exemplified with reference to the individuals involved. Although there were deep schisms within London radicalism, nevertheless links between parish radicals and those who operated on a wider stage were strong. The shift in vestry elections, mirroring that at parliamentary level which had taken place after 1832, moulded the political landscape that faced the new Poor Law Commissioners at precisely the time they began to turn their attention to the capital. In the metropolitan context the Poor Law Commissioners had to draw a balance between districts in which the population was inadequate for the purpose of building a new workhouse and those which were so large as to prove impossible to administer. That the Poor Law Amendment Act threatened to undermine any gains that had been made by the parochial reform movement was not lost on local vestrymen, especially where Hobhouse's Act had recently been implemented.
