Coal tax post

Coal imported into the City of London had been taxed since medieval times and, as it was originally all brought by sea to riverside wharfs, the collection of the duties was relatively easy. The City is a small (one square mile) but influential and rich part of London. The Port of London, within which the duties were payable, stretched far beyond the boundaries of the City, all the way along the Thames from Yantlet Creek (downstream from Gravesend) to Staines. By the 19th century, however, there was increasing trade by canal and rail, and various acts of Parliament extended the catchment area to include these new modes of transport. The (8 & 9 Vict. c. 101) set the boundary at a radius of 20…

The coal duties had always been unpopular and were the subject of attacks by pamphleteers (for example Joseph Bottomley Firth in 1887) throughout their life. Objection was taken to a tax on a basic necessity and the anomaly of a tax in London which did not apply to the rest of the country. The greater anomaly was that the area of collection – the Metropolitan Police District – was so much larger than the area in which they were spent: the Metropolitan Board of Works covered much the same area as its successor the London County Council. With the growth of the outer suburbs, their residents resented paying a tax which had very little direct benefit for them. This is why in 1868 Parliament…