Private Bill Legislation in the Nineteenth Century

This book explores the passing of more than 20,000 private Acts from 1797 to 1914, including information about the many other Bills that were unsuccessfully promoted, and the evidence that Parliament took about the processes and costs involved.

Its subject analysis is accompanied by explanation of the evolving procedures involved, with citation of evidence given—sometimes by well-known witnesses such as George and Robert Stephenson, and Brunel—to the repeated Select Committees that examined the often disproportionately expensive procedures required.

For each Parliamentary session, the book provides the totals of Bills and Acts, and the associated Parliamentary reports and papers. The ability to obtain private powers was a cornerstone of the development of nineteenth-century Britain, and of the physical re-shaping, infrastructure and company organisations of the Victorian era. Without private Act powers, the creation of canals, railways and improvement commissions, as well as many other business initiatives, could not have occurred—yet how they came to be promoted and passed has never been systematically analysed and recorded, until now.