142 Before the Bobbiessource of never-ending expense to the parish, and of profit to the Select
[vestry] and their connections.'^74 Church-related expenses sparked fierce
debates, especially where dissenters were numerous, as in Clerkenwell?^5 A
proposal to convert the Easter offering into a church rate ignited smoulder-
ing conflict between the residents and vestry of St Marylebone in 1827. Thtal
local rates in Marylebone had risen from 2s.4d. in the pound in 1824 to
3s.lld. The rates yielded over £150 000 and yet the parish was in debt for
more than £100 000. A good portion of this had been spent on new churches,
including a new parish church that boasted an £800 transparency by Benja-
min West.^76
London householders in the 1820s generally wanted better streets,
improved street lighting, and to help the poor. In St Martin-in-the-Fields,
for instance, the parishioners argued that while they did not mind paying for
poor relief, they did object to paying over £68 of poor relief funds to feast the
vestry. The vestry of St Martin's had paid for a dinner out of parochial funds
for 16 men that had included 11 bottles of port, three of sherry, seven of
Bucellas and six of Madeira.^77 Feasting, though long a custom, was no longer
seen as a legitimate use of public funds.
Granting contracts for goods or services by vestries to vestrymen was
increasingly decried as 'jobbery'. In 1815, £339 18s.9d. was spent by the
vestry of St Paul, Covent Garden, on painting the church. The paint con-
tractor was a vestryman?^8 The St Marylebone vestry paid the rather large
sum of £4800 for a piece of land on which they planned to build a new watch
house. The land was purchased from a vestryman. Because of the clamour
about expenses, however, the new watch house was never constructed?^9
Questionable accounting, extravagance, controversial church building, and
jobbery were seen as symptoms of more fundamental defect: select vestries
were not sufficiently accountable to the ratepayers. In theory, vestries were
accountable to the local bench of justices but when the members of the local
bench were also members of the select vestry, accountability could be a
sham. Select vestries held their meetings with no outsiders present and rarely
allowed ratepayers access to their accounts or published them. The solution,
reformers argued, was for vestries to be made elective and thus more directly
responsible to the respectable ratepayers. Unlike Peel, with his oblique
approach, these reformers were saying that local administrators were incom-
petent and/or corrupt.
Demands for reform of parish government were strong enough in 1818-19
to support the passage of two bills sponsored by William Sturges Bourne.
Both were permissive rather than prescriptive and they made little difference
to the way most metropolitan parishes did their business. But these bills are
indicative of the increased attention Parliament was paying to local govern-
ment and the willingness of the central government to regulate and shape it.
The first (58 Geo. III c. 69) gave multiple votes in vestry meetings to