Catalogue description Home Office: Municipal Bye-Laws

Alphabetical by borough name

The Municipal Bye Laws which are to be found in this series were prepared as a consequence of an Act which became law on 9 September 1835: 'An Act to Provide for the Regulation of Municipal Corporations in England and Wales' (5 & 6 Wm IV, c 76).

Drafts of proposed Bye Laws, the Bye Laws themselves, and accompanying letters, were forwarded to the Home Office in London and often marked for the attention of Lord John Russell, Home Secretary from April 1835 to August 1839. The Bye Laws as proposed and then finalised were forwarded to the Home Office once meetings of the relevant Borough Councils, with a sufficient number of councillors present, had agreed upon the wording and content. As a consequence of this correspondence, a number of the Bye Laws across England and Wales were amended or altered to take into account dissatisfaction expressed by the Home Office.

The proposed Bye Laws were regularly rejected in part and returned to the Borough Councils with suggested amendments and 'improvements'. A final version, agreed upon by the Council of the Borough or Town or City in question, and with such changes as were deemed necessary, would then become the legally binding local Bye Laws. The convention was to wait for forty days (during which time copies of the Bye Laws or Laws would be attached to the front of town halls or left displayed in other prominent places) and for the Bye Laws to become law once the forty days were expired if no instructions to the contrary were received. Correspondence between local and central government, after the passage of the Act in 1835, on occasion reflects disputes between the municipal authorities and the Home Office over the wording of the Bye Laws. Some Boroughs printed their Bye Laws and their printed Laws were submitted to the Home Office as published booklets.