Local office and corruption - PowerPoint Presentation

1. Local office and corruption

2. Lecture outline‘petty corruption’The nature of local government: its different layers and very interpersonal natureOpportunities for corruption and threats to ‘community’ScandalsMoves towards reform

3. Levels of the local: CountySome towns were ‘counties’ eg Coventry (1451-1842) – abolished after disputes over ratings. Quarter sessions – supervised licensing of alehouses, the construction of bridges, prisons and asylums, superintendence of main roads, public buildings and charitable institutions, and the regulation of weights and measures1739 a single "county rate" was introduced under the control of a county treasurerLord lieutenant (1540s), deputy lieutenant, custos rotulorumLocal militia (after 1660) – local taxes until 1757-62 acts 1803 a salaried county surveyorTax collectors for national taxes1780 County Associations pushed for ‘economical reform’

4. JPsJP as key local officialUnpaidLarge discretionary powerClerics could be JPs too – often seen as harsh moralists

5. Trading JusticeA depiction of a Trading Justice who has been caught in a ‘Rat-trap’ (1773) The publication it advertised attacks Thomas Bishop, one of the Middlesex magistrates who sat at the Litchfield Street Rotation Office and accused him and others of ‘unparalleled degeneracy’ On the reverse of the sheet is a further advertisement of the book of a libellous character in which Bishop, though not named, is described as "a worshipful Scoundrel, well known in the polite world; who from a Shoeless Vagabond is become the most corpulent Butcher in the Litchfield Street Slaughter-house.“ worth £40k.Its author, Robert Holloway, was prosecuted for libel in 1776 and sentenced to three months imprisonment

6. MunicipalitiesMayor; council; inhabitantsJurisdiction over: local law and order; the regulation of trades; town lands and contracts; poor relief.parishes, ward; craft/trade guild; clubs and societies (fourteen were founded in Newcastle, six in Durham before 1750) – Peter Clark: fostering friendships and interests; friendly societies, journeymen clubsUrbanisation; growth of LondonSatire of the 1741 mayoral election in London: ‘Votes are Sold for Wine and Gold’

7. Urban political culturePopulation growth: 3m in 1530; 5.25m in 1700; 6.5m in 1750; 9m in 1800Much of the increase was urban: London was over 1m. ‘new’ industrial cities eg Birmingham and Manchester, both c.700k by 1800By 1850 more than half the British population lived in towns and cities and worked in factories and minesC16th Robert Tittler: ‘culture of corruption’; even closer in C17th-C18th?Peter Borsay: ‘Urban Renaissance’ – including improvements to streets (paving, lights) and infrastructure

8. ElectionsCorruption of urban constituencies seen as part of the grand corruption that threatened liberties. Electoral law – outside of law re the judiciary, this was the only part of the law establishing ‘bribery’ as a crime. 1729 law required all voters to take an oath they had not received ‘any sum or sums of Money, Office, Place or Employment, Gift or Reward.’ Customary civic gifting and entertainment vs notion of bribes and corruption. Top down or bottom up?Repeated condemnation failed to erode customary practices – cultural shifts were extremely slowIn part because candidates routinely created ambiguities about whether or not such practices were illicit, and used allegations of corruption to unseat each other at and after electionsA detail from Ready Money the Prevailing Candidate (1727)

9. Charles Lucas in Dublin, the ‘Irish Wilkes’critique of Dublin’s governors and parliamentary representation 1748-9, also adding a sense that Ireland had become a victim of Britain’s corrupt colonialismInvoked Sparta, Athens and Rome to prove that luxury eroded urban public spiritednessLucas targeted the artisan voters: claimed dishonest traders undercut rivals by bribing city officials; alleged the farming of the city revenues to one of the alderman was a ‘job’; encouraged them to think of themselves ‘as a free Voter, as a public Trustee, as a Patriot commissioned by his dear and confiding Country.’But Lucas was also attacked (by Burke amongst others) for opposition designed merely to extract ‘some Things for his family’ and for money

10. Local infrastructural projectsCanals and turnpike trust - 5000 commissioners by 1783https://www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/transport/onlineatlas/turnpikes.htmlrailways from 1820s https://www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/transport/onlineatlas/railways.html; George Hudson "the Railway Napoleon" who went from being a Yorkshire draper to heading four major regional railways, before revelations of improprieties in 1854 forced him to flee the country. The Times 10 April 1849: ‘a system without rule, without order, without even a definite morality’

11. Civic contests between officers and artisans over contracts, leases etc: Mansion House scandal in late 1730s rival bids from a consortium of common councillors and the other from independent artisans. Contract was awarded to the former, even though the tender was higher. Led to insertion in the General Evening Post of the oath of a Common Councillor to ‘maintain no singular Profit against the common Profit of this City’ and a list of 7 aldermen and 110 councillors who had voted for the insiders; pamphlet war about ‘City Corruption’Cf Edinburgh(R.A. Houston)Colonial projects suchas harboursGuilds as corrupt or meansto restrain individual greed?

12. ParishesKeith Wrightson, Steve Hindle in 1990s – social history converging with political history‘The parish state’ – and exported to colonies in Atlantic WorldThe experience of authority was often very local Friendship, kinship, neighbourliness more intenseCovetousness, self-love as dangers to the communityCharityThe Act for the Relief of the Poor 1601, popularly known as the Elizabethan Poor Law, created system of relief for people who were unable to work:mainly those who were "lame, impotent, old, blind".The able-bodied poor were to be set to work in a House of Industry. Materials were to be provided for the poor to be set to work.The idle poor and vagrants were to be sent to a House of Correction or even prison1662 – Poor Relief Act 1662 (Settlement Acts)1723 – Workhouse Test Act

13. The offices: scavenger; constable; overseer of the poor; accounts auditors; vestry= collective decision-making body – closed (specific number of householders, often 24) and open (all householders and ratepayers, including women). Often chosen by lot/rotation, without pay.50k or one in 20 held local office at any one time c.1700 (Mark Goldie’s ‘unacknowledged republic’ of 9700 parishes in 1700, 1400 by 1800). 400k attended vestry meetings c. 1800.Still a minority of the population and participation was socially circumscribed: the ‘better sort’ or ‘chief inhabitants’; St Mary Colechurch, London, 1631, had 2 churchwardens; 2 sidemen (collectors of rates); 8 assessors of the poor; 10 auditors of accounts; 2 common councillors; 2 questmen; 2 constables; 2 scavengers = 32. By gender too.Tendency to oligarchy or exclusionsbut still extensive.

14. FinancesRatesPoor relief: £100-150k in 1650s; £400k in 1695; in 1784 it was estimated at £2 million, had doubled by 1803, and by 1813 stood at £6.5 million. Welfare expenditure rose faster (3.5%) than increased need, and population increase, and wages, in every decade over two centuries (Brodie Waddell, P&P, 2022)

15. Parishes did have some oversight mechanismsChurchwardens and overseers of the poor had a duty to deposit accounts at the end of their year in officeSometimes the whole parish was involved in auditing them eg in 1601, for example, St Michael’s Bedwardine, near Worcester, recorded that the accounts were ‘publicly and distinctly read over, perused, considered of diligently…after public notice given in the church the Sunday before, according to the ancient custom.’ In Leeds in 1828, 3-5000 people attended a parish meeting.

16. But problems tooannual tenure meant insufficient skills and many officials were unenthusiastic/negligent about their roles. By end of C18th large parishes were employing paid vestry clerks – growing professionalisation. Or parish oversight was left to a small group of parishioners.Temptation to excessive feasting and backhanders for contracts Lax or fraudulent accounts.

17. Abuse in Birmingham1817, the master of the workhouse in Birmingham, Mr George Hinchcliffe, was accused in the local press of not merely embezzling resources, but also of operating a system where a former inmate, a Mrs Martin, had been selling clothing from the workhouse in a shop next door as well as supplying additional food to the inmates accumulated nearly £2,000 in the process.When the scandal broke, Mrs Martin committed suicide. Hinchcliffe had been running the workhouse as a private business, making profits from the labour of the inmates with the consent and approval of the board of guardians, since 1801Birmingham Workhouse, founded 1734

18. Abuses in Manchester in the early C19thIndustrialised town of 60k by 1790 that still had a court leet and churchwardens in charge of a poor rate that raised £20k paCampaign spearheaded by Thomas Battye, a brewer/dealer in beer who turned sheriff’s office and accountant, a middle-class reformer who acted on behalf of the community to which he belonged but ‘much divided’ it in his attempts to reduce taxpayers’ bills (which benefited the richer inhabitants more than the poor)Reported in local newspapers and he wrote 7 pamphlets1500 inhabitants attended a meeting about the alleged corruption of one official, Richard UnitePoor accounting; embezzlement; workhouse full of vice; ‘hush-money’ from fathers of illegitimate children; extravagant expenses. Half the money raised for the poor was misspent.Battye: ‘The books of accounts should be open for the inspection of every house-keeper … public justice demands a public investigation!’

19. 1834 Poor Law: national system; parishes grouped into unions with workhouses; uniforms to be worn; harsh work to deter the able poor; separation of families. 1837 image

20. Joseph Merceron and corruption in the early C19th East End of Londonstarted as a lowly clerk in a lottery office Used power as magistrate and churchwarden (open vestry) to control local poor rates for political ends and grant licences to his friends1804 vestry audit1809 prosecution instigated by local vicar Joshua King – but vestry passed vote of confidence and paid expenses out of parish fundsHe was jailed in 1818 for misappropriating £1000 from public funds – but regained control of Bethnal Green on his release – he had nurtured local popular support through patronage network. Vestry as corrupt (Webbs).survived a parliamentary inquiry in 1830 reputed to be worth about £300,000‘collective action problem’: he had been opposed by a local minister and then by other reformers, but difficult to gain momentum; and showed the inadequacies of local accounting mechanisms

21. Inquiries and reformLocal campaigns 1825 On the Abuses of Civil Incorporation listed abuses in Great Yarmouth: corporation members leasing themselves land on long leases and applying public money for legal costs of its corporation members; called for printed annual statements of finances.Coventry’s Freeman’s Register (1827, 13 parts) focused on corporation deficienciesRoyal Commission appointed by the Whig government in 1833 to investigate the corporations in England and Wales Mr Starmer, town clerk of Cambridge, ‘the Corporation had a right to expend the town’s income on themselves and their friends, without being bound to apply any part of it to the good of the town’Thomas Burbidge, town clerk of Leicester: corporations were private bodies – he had retained £10k of corporation funds – he counter-sued for compensation and was not prosecuted; in 1851 he was compensated.

22. Rosemary Sweet: critique of urban corruption had become increasingly politicised by early C19th1833 Commission dominated by radicals eg Joseph Parkes (co-drafter of bill), Coventry 1833: The rotten corporations of England, he said, were the citadels of political corruption and ToryismMunicipal Reform Act 1835 main proposals: uniform town council, elected by inhabitant householders in a free ballot; magistrates elected by the Council, one third to go out annually; annual and public audits; all Charities placed under the administration of a separate board;replacements of fees with salaries

23. ConclusionLocal government involved large numbers of people and fulfilled many different functionsThe opportunities for corruption were widespread if small-scaleSome officers, such as the trading justices and vestrymen, acquired a reputation for corruptionThe perception of corruption at local level contributed to reform in the 1830s