The creation of the London County Council in 1889 decided the ultimate fate of the Old Nichol slum (and what a fate). But the Council was a long time in the making: satirical magazines such as Moonshine (below right) and (more famously) Punch magazine (below left) had lots of fun in the mid- and late-1880s as Sir William Harcourt MP attempted and failed to get legislation passed to reform London’s local government by creating a unitary authority. The capital was run by some 250 separate organisations, while the medieval Corporation of London administered the City of London’s Square Mile.

Harcourt told parliament in 1884 that he knew he was “launching the vessel of London municipal reform upon a sea strewn with many wrecks and whose shores are whitened with the bones of many previous adventurers”. (Hence the cartoon on the right.)

What he faced was mass indifference, with an average of just 15 MPs turning up for the debates. Eventually, in 1888, the Local Government Act was passed, which created the London County Council a year later.