Catalogue description Local Government Board and predecessors: Correspondence with Government Offices

This series contains correspondence of the Poor Law Commission and Board and the Local Government Board with other government departments, the Metropolitan Police, the Metropolitan Board of Works and parliamentary officers relating to poor law administration and, after 1871, public health and local government services.

Also includes volumes of internal correspondence and papers of the Poor Law Board and the Local Government Board, including draft orders and Bills, minutes and memoranda on establishment and organization matters, precedents, general questions of administration and correspondence with the Treasury. Some volumes relate to specific subjects, particularly plague, but also anthrax, cholera, leprosy, smallpox, yellow fever, quarantine and emigration.

For correspondence with the General Register Office on registration of birth, deaths and marriages and the Census see:

For reports on foreign epidemics see MH 98

RG 19

RG 21

RG 29

RG 48

For smallpox vaccination returns see RG 56

Papers for the period 1909 to 1919 have largely not survived; those which have will be found on subject files on the Ministry of Health, notably MH 78

Local Government Board, 1871-1919

Poor Law Board, 1847-1871

Poor Law Commission, 1834-1847

For registers see MH 20