The office of town surveyor was first legalised by the Towns Improvement Clauses Act 1847 (10 & 11 Vic. c. 34, s. 7),[1] although for some considerable period prior to this date similar appointments had been made in several of the more important English towns, notably in the case of Liverpool. In the following year the legal office of surveyor was confirmed by the Public Health Act 1848 (11 & 12 Vic. c. 63, s. 37), and it is now law under the Public Health Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vic. c. 55): that comprehensive statute, under which all Sanitary Acts are now included, and which Act will be frequently alluded to in the course of this book.

The clause which specially refers to the appointment of the surveyor is as follows:—

“Every urban authority shall from time to time appoint fit and proper persons to be medical officer of health, surveyor, inspector of nuisances, clerk, and treasurer: Provided that if any such authority is empowered by any other Act in force within their district to appoint any such officer, this enactment shall be deemed to be satisfied by the employment under this Act of the officer so appointed, with such additional remuneration as they think fit, and no second appointment shall be made under this Act. Every urban authority shall also appoint or employ such assistants, collectors, and other officers and servants as may be necessary and proper for the efficient execution of this Act, and may make regulations with respect to the duties and conduct of the officers and servants so appointed or employed ...” (38 & 39 Vic. c. 55, s. 189), and these officers (except the medical officer of health and the inspector of nuisances, when any portion of their salary is paid out of moneys voted by Parliament to the powers of the Local Government Board), may be removed by the urban authority at their pleasure, which was not the case when the appointment was first made in 1847.

Here it is necessary to state that for sanitary purposes England and Wales are divided into two divisions—viz. urban sanitary districts and rural sanitary districts, the former of these divisions being further subdivided into boroughs, where the urban sanitary authority is the mayor, aldermen, and burgesses acting by the council, and districts, which are under the authority of improvement commissioners or local boards; the rural sanitary districts are the areas of unions not included in urban districts, and they are under the authority of the guardians of the union.

It is my intention to deal more particularly with the duties of a surveyor acting under an urban authority, but the following section of the Public Health Act 1875 relates apparently to the appointment of a surveyor to a rural authority, although no mention is made in this or any other clause of the Act directly of such an officer by name, except that amongst the definitions of the Public Health Act the following appears:—

“‘Surveyor’ includes any person appointed by a rural authority to perform any of the duties of surveyor under this Act” (38 & 39 Vic. c. 55, s. 4).

The clause I have above referred to is as follows:—

“Every rural authority shall from time to time appoint fit and proper persons to be medical officer or officers of health and inspector or inspectors of nuisances; they shall also appoint such assistants and other officers and servants as may be necessary and proper for the efficient execution of this Act ...” (38 & 39 Vic. c. 55, s. 190).

The following clauses apply to officers of rural as well as urban authorities:—

“The same person may be both surveyor and inspector of nuisances ...” (38 & 39 Vic. c. 55, s. 192).

“Officers or servants appointed or employed under this Act by the local authority shall not in any wise be concerned or interested in any bargain or contract made with such authority for any of the purposes of this Act ...” (38 & 39 Vic. c. 55, s. 193).

“Before any officer or servant of a local authority enters on any office or employment under this Act by reason whereof he will or may be entrusted with the custody or control of money, the local authority by whom he is appointed shall take from him sufficient security for the faithful execution of such office or employment and for duly accounting for all moneys which may be entrusted to him by reason thereof” (38 & 39 Vic. c. 55, s. 194).

In addition to these clauses there are several regulating the receipt of money by officers, but these should not affect the town surveyor. Although in many places he has the onerous duty of paying workmen, certifying tradesmen’s accounts, and other financial transactions, he ought under no circumstances to have anything to do with the receipt of money. Unfortunately, in some of the smaller towns the surveyor is also employed as rate collector; but as this is evidently a very improper proceeding, I shall not further allude to it in any manner.

It will be observed that in the foregoing clauses of the Public Health Act the word “surveyor” is always used, and thus this is the legal title of those holding such appointments. It is obvious, however, that, although this title may have well suited the office up to the year 1847, when it was made the legal title, the prodigious growth of municipal work during the last 35 years has made it necessary that some change should be made, and the title altered to that of “engineer,” or some other similar suitable name. At the present time several different meanings and occupations are attached to the word “surveyor,” as the following list will show:—“land surveyor,” “district surveyor,” “county surveyor,” “road surveyor,” “surveyor of taxes,” “surveyor of customs,” “quantity surveyor,” “fire insurance surveyor,” “Lloyd’s surveyor,” and a still more curious instance where an urban authority is itself dubbed “surveyor of highways” by the 144th section of the Public Health Act 1875; and the title of town surveyor as now applied cannot but lead to confusion and to perfectly erroneous impressions as to his work and duties.

Dr. Ackland, in a paper read before the Association of Municipal and Sanitary Engineers and Surveyors, at a district meeting held at Oxford, makes the following remarks on this point:—“In the Public Health Act 1875 (the summary of all health enactments) the name of ‘engineer’ does not once occur in the 343 clauses. He is still the old ‘surveyor’ we all remember, the plodding, energetic man of highways and byeways ... but then the surveyor of the present day may be called on to advise on anything, from the form and cost of an earthen syphon trap to the calculation of work to be done by engines which are to supply half a million of persons with water; to be responsible for the construction of sanitary mechanisms, from a housemaid’s sink to an intermittent downward filtration farm.”

There can be but little doubt that it is absolutely necessary for the town surveyor of the present day to be a competent civil engineer of great knowledge and varied experience, for he may at any moment be called upon to advise his corporation upon any of the following subjects, or to act in any one of the following capacities, in addition to the multifarious ordinary duties legally devolving upon him as surveyor under the Sanitary Acts:—

(1.) As engineer for sewerage and sewage works.

(2.) As engineer for water and gas works.

(3.) As engineer for canals, docks, harbour improvements, and river navigation, or for the protection of coasts against the encroachments of the sea, and the prevention of floods by rivers.

(4.) As engineer for the construction and maintenance of roads and bridges.

(5.) As engineer for the construction and maintenance of lines of tramways.

(6.) As architect for the construction of lunatic asylums, municipal offices, hospitals, abattoirs, mortuaries, baths and wash-houses, cemetery chapels, stables, police stations, and other similar works.

(7.) As landscape gardener for the laying out of public recreation grounds, parks, and cemeteries.

(8.) As quantity surveyor to make estimates of all works, and often (very improperly) to furnish bills of quantities to intending contractors.

(9.) As surveyor and valuer to advise his employers on the values, &c., of corporate or other property.

(10.) As land surveyor to make surveys of any size that may be required.

(11.) As accountant to examine and rectify the workmen’s wages sheets, and all tradesmen’s accounts for work performed or goods supplied.

The foregoing list is no exaggeration of the onerous duties of the town surveyor, and it seems to be a grievous mistake that this officer, whose importance in all practical sanitary work cannot be over-stated (as without him no useful municipal work could go on) has been left unprotected by the Public Health Act of 1875.

In that Act both the medical officer of health and the inspector of nuisances have received Government protection, whereas the surveyor, the very officer of all others who necessarily is more likely to come into collision and to be unpopular with his employers in the faithful discharge of his duties, has been afforded no protection whatever, but has been left to the tender mercies of an annually changing body of municipal governors, “to be removable at their pleasure” (38 & 39 Vic., c. 55, s. 189).

On this highly important point I cannot do better than quote several passages from Mr. Lewis Angell’s interesting address to the Association of Municipal and Sanitary Engineers and Surveyors on the occasion of their inauguration in the year 1873:[2]

“The ‘town surveyor,’ according to his opportunities, has done the country good service, but, surrounded as we have been with obstructions and difficulties, cramped and restricted by popular prejudices and private interest, subject to clamour and attack, without protection and without appeal, it is indeed surprising that we have accomplished so much. Had such officers been from the first judiciously selected, adequately remunerated, properly supported, and duly protected, our influence upon sanitary progress would have been more conspicuous and our office better appreciated.

“As engineers we do not pretend to a knowledge of medical science, but it is equally within the knowledge of the average sanitary engineer as of a medical officer of health that pure air, pure water, properly constructed houses, and an unpolluted soil are the cardinal conditions of health. These are mere sanitary axioms. The means by which such conditions are attained are drainage, ventilation, water-supply, and other matters entirely within the functions of the engineer. It is the function of the sanitary engineer to prevent that which the medical officer of health is called upon to detect. ...

“In many cases the unprotected surveyor may be required to report to a protected medical officer the negligence of his own employers. No local surveyor or engineer can be expected to give cordial and active assistance in compulsory sanitary work when he is conscious that his action would be opposed to the views or the interests of his employers, the public upon whom he is dependent. The existence of such a distinction between the medical officer and surveyor under the same board will produce a want of harmony in interest, and must lead to a divergence of action between the two departments. ...”

And speaking of the multifarious duties of the town surveyor, Mr. Angell says: “Any one section of his duties would, under commercial circumstances, command fair pay according to its importance; but where cumulative duties are included in the same office, they demand constant attention, special knowledge, professional experience, and administrative ability; to which is added the anxiety which the responsibilities of public office always involve. Such a position in a commercial concern would receive high remuneration in proportion to the extent of the undertaking, but unfortunately, our work does not pay a dividend: it is all expenditure from which the town derives no return excepting in health and comfort, matters which are neither fairly assessed, nor duly appreciated; consequently, the municipal engineer is paid less for his professional knowledge than the contractor’s agent whose work he directs.”

Speaking further on the subject of Government protection, Mr. Angell says: “Surveyors appointed under the Towns Improvement Clauses Act were protected during the existence of the General Board of Health. Sir C. Adderley’s Public Health and Local Government Bill of 1872 proposed similar protection. Officers employed under the Poor Laws are fully protected as to position, emoluments, and superannuation. The administration of the Poor Laws and the Public Health Acts is now united in one department under the newly established Local Government Board: it is therefore in my opinion equally due to Local Board officers, that they also should be recognised and protected. Without such protection, sanitary legislation cannot, in the words of the Royal Sanitary Commission, be ‘active and effective,’ because local officers are too dependent on their immediate employers to be thoroughly efficient.

“In advocating protection let me not be misunderstood. I do not mean centralisation or the removal of that proper control which every local authority should maintain over its own officers. I would maintain intact the great principle of local government, which has been the bulwark of our social and political freedom. But local government may degenerate, and in small towns deteriorate into littleness: local affairs are too frequently avoided by those who are most fitted by intelligence and social standing to take part therein. I would simply control in the most constitutional manner the short-comings or excesses of local government as is already done in various other departments. I would require that local officers should be properly qualified and adequately remunerated; that in the honest discharge of their duties and during good behaviour they should be protected from the effects of ignorance, narrow prejudices, and interested clamour, and that they should have an appeal to a disinterested and judicial body, superior to local feeling. The demand is reasonable—I ask no more. ....”

To these admirable remarks by Mr. Angell on the present position of the town surveyor I can add but little.

I believe that the sole reason which is given why Government protection is not granted to the surveyor is the argument used by those in authority, that if a surveyor disagrees with the corporation he serves, it is considered better that he should resign his appointment rather than be protected by the Local Government Board or other central office; but if this argument is sound, why does it not also apply in a similar manner to the medical officer of health or the inspector of nuisances? The real fact no doubt is, that in framing the Public Health Act of 1875, medical men were consulted and not engineers, and this is very apparent in many of the clauses, which will be fully considered in their proper places in this book.

The time will no doubt come when the necessity for some change in the position of the town surveyor will be apparent, and adequate protection will be afforded him; in the meantime let him strive, by attention to work, and by daily advancement in scientific knowledge, and in courtesy to those with whom he is associated, to make the position and power of the town surveyor felt and honoured as it should be throughout the kingdom.