Board of Trade, Railway Department and Local Government Board, Metropolis Water Acts...

This series contains correspondence and papers of the Board of Trade's Railway Department to January 1873 and thereafter of the Local Government Board relating to the water supply of the Metropolis, Metropolis Water Act 1871, annual and half-yearly accounts of individual water companies, petitions from ratepayers and local authorities, and correspondence and papers relating to the administration of the Act of 1871 and to subsequent legislation, culminating in the establishment of the Metropolitan Water Board in 1902.

For later correspondence see HLG 50

Most correspondence with the Metropolitan Water Board has not survived.

• Board of Trade, Railway Department, 1851-1919
• Local Government Board, Metropolis Water Acts Department, 1873-1884

Responsibility for the Metropolis Water Acts, the work of the examiner and the auditor appointed under the acts and correspondence with the Metropolitan Water Companies was transferred to the Local Government Board from the Board of Trade in January 1873. In 1875 the work was assigned to a junior legal assistant who was also responsible for all work under the Alkali Acts, including direction of the Alkali Inspectorate, except the formal registration carried out in the Chief Clerk's Department. He also prepared the selections from the correspondence of the board, cases for submission to the Law Officers and a register of judicial decisions in cases relating to the jurisdiction of the board.

He brought to the attention of the board any matter arising in Parliament with which they were concerned. In 1884 his department (the Metropolis Water Acts Department) was dissolved and its duties under the Metropolis Water Acts and Alkali Acts passed to the Public Health Department and its legal and parliamentary work to a legal assistant who already acted as parliamentary agent.