Poor Relief - Law Commission

Reference Extent of repeal or revocation
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19 Geo.2 c.15 (1745) The whole Act.
(Bethnal Green, Church Completion
and Poor Relief Act)
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19 Geo.2 c.15 (1745) (Bethnal Green, Church Completion and Poor Relief Act)
1. This note proposes the repeal of an obsolete 1745 Act passed to raise money
for a church and for poor relief in Bethnal Green in London.
2. According to its long title, the purpose of the 1745 Act was:
for enabling the Inhabitants of the Hamlet of Bethnal Green, in the County of
Middlesex, 41 to compleat their Church, and to pay for Debts already
contracted, for the Relief of the Poor of the said Hamlet.
3. The preamble to the 1745 Act recorded that the Act was consequential upon an
Act passed in 1742 42 for the purpose of (1) making the hamlet of Bethnal Green (in
the parish of St Dunstan, Stepney) a separate and distinct parish and (2) erecting a
new parish church (and Minister’s house) there. 43 The preamble also recorded that
the arrangements set out in the 1742 Act for raising the necessary funds – including
the levying of funeral rates and duties and the sale of annuities (up to £5000) – had
proved insufficient to permit the completion of the church building or the
commencement of the building of the Minister’s house. Moreover some of the
administrative arrangement provided for in the 1742 Act for the meetings of the
trustees appointed by that Act and the collection of rate moneys were not working
properly.
4. The 1745 Act provided as follows: 44
(a) repeal of 1742 Act arrangements for electing trustees; appointment of
new and future trustees to implement the 1745 Act; punishment of
neglectful rate collectors
(b) additional sum of £1300 to be raised by annuities; trustees empowered to
levy additional rates on all houses and land in the hamlet of Bethnal
41
Bethnal Green today is within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
42
16 Geo.2 c.28. This 1742 Act has since been repealed by 53 Geo.3 c.cxiii (1813) (Bethnal Green
Improvement), 8 & 9 Vict. c.clxxx (1845) (St Matthew’s Church, Bethnal Green) and SR & O
1901/212(L), art 4.
43
The need for a new parish arose because of a considerable increase in the population in that area in
the latter half of the seventeenth century.
44
The provisions of the 1745 Act are not identified by reference to section numbers because the Act
itself was not divided into sections.
30