Lords Sitting of 24 February 1885

MINUTES.
Took the Oath for the First Time—The Lord Bishop of Newcastle.
SELECT COMMITTEE—Office of the Clerk of the Parliaments and Office of the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, The Lord Privy Seal added.
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading—Prevention of Crimes Amendment* (20); Water Companies (Regulation of Powers) * (21).
Select Committee—Poor Law Guardians (Ireland)* (6), The Lord Sudeley added.

METROPOLITAN IMPROVEMENTS— PARLIAMENT STREET.

  QUESTION. OBSERVATIONS.
  LORD LAMINGTONasked, Whether it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to empower a private company to widen Parliament Street and to carry out all the other projected improvements in the vicinity of the Houses of Parliament? The noble Lord said, he desired to congratulate the noble Earl (the Earl of Rosebery) on his appointment as First Commissioner of Works, and the House upon the fact that that Department was now directly represented in their Lordships' House. There was great need of the Public Offices being concentrated in the vicinity of the houses of Parliament, and it was with regret that he found that it had been decided that the new Admiralty and War Offices were not to be built on the George Street site. The site chosen was not only too distant from the Houses of Parliament, but the buildings would be a disfigurement and injury to the Park. The proposed scheme to which his Question referred would prevent that concentration of the Public Offices in the vicinity of Parliament which had always been considered so desirable, and leave the land in the hands of private speculators. He understood that the Government intended to place all these improvements in the hands of a private Company—that was to say, would give the Company that site which was the best for Public Offices; but he could not believe that such a thing on the part of the Government could be possible. He thought that it was the duty of the Government to carry out the improvements required, and to obtain the best sites they could in the neighbourhood of Parliament for the numerous Offices, independently of the Admiralty and War Offices which now needed to be located there.
  THE EARL OF ROSEBERY,in reply, said, he had no reason to complain of the tone of the noble Lord in asking this Question; and he should not find it necessary, in answering it, to excuse himself on the ground that he was unacquainted with the business of the
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  Board of Works. As a matter of fact, it was not the intention of the Government to empower any private Company to take any steps to widen Parliament Street. It was true that a private Company had brought a Bill into Parliament asking for powers to do these things; but it had no connection with the Government, and was not empowered by the Government to deal with the matter. The noble Lord must be aware of the difficulty of dealing with this great question of Parliament Street. Ho would only say, further, that if the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the time being on either side could be persuaded to take the matter up, it would, no doubt, be desirable; but in the present case he did not see why, if the interests of the Government were properly safeguarded, the Department he represented should offer any opposition to the proposal. That was a very large admission to make; but as regarded the actual Question of the noble Lord, his answer was that the Government had given no power to any private Company to deal with this matter.
  THE EARL OF REDESDALE (CHAIRMAN of COMMITTEES)said, anything more important than that Parliament should allow a private Company to deal with the land in and behind Parliament Street really could not be well imagined. The proposal was that the Company should deal with the land and streets near Parliament Street, re-arrange the streets, and make new ones, and do some unnecessary works. The Company proposed to raise a capital of £300,000, and to suppose that the Government could not provide that sum was perfectly absurd. The whole question should be carefully inquired into. He had never heard of a more mischievous proposal than that which the noble Earl seemed inclined to sanction. The work ought to be carried out by a Public Department for public objects, otherwise not only would sites required for Public Offices be lost, but the alterations made would have the effect of improving the property of the individuals interested, at the expense of much-needed public improvements.

ARMY—THE 20TH HUSSARS.

  QUESTION, OBSERVATIONS.
  THE EARL OF LONGFORDrose to ask a Question with respect to the

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  service equipment of some Cavalry recently ordered abroad. Among the troops told off for the Egyptian Expedition were two squadrons of 20th Hussars at Aldershot. They had received notice that their equipments would be given out to them at Aldershot, and they accordingly returned to store their ordinary clothing, except fatigue suits. Their Service equipment did not arrive at Aldershot, with the exception of helmets, which were of the wrong pattern, and at the last moment some sort of substitute for gaiters, and the bandolier cartridge belts, which attached themselves very badly to the ordinary clothing of the men. In this—Bashi-Bazouk fashion—they had marched from Aldershot. If the Queen, whose interest in her soldiers was well-known, had met those irregulars upon the road, Her Majesty would have required a striet explanation of the matter. This was not a very large matter, but if a small force could not be equipped at our principal Military Station without the contradictory orders and confusion there exhibited, then all their short-service, and territorial system, and Staff College, and Intelligence Department had been instituted in vain. He begged to ask the Question of which he had given Notice—namely, Whether the squadron of the 20th Hussars that marched from Aldershot on the 18th instant was in all respects properly equipped for the service upon which it was ordered?
  THE EARL OF MORLEY,in reply, said, he thought that nothing could be more unfair or in a greater degree inaccurate than the manner in which the noble Earl had asked this Question. The state of the case was that the clothing of the whole force recently ordered to the Soudan and Egypt had to be prepared in about 14 days, and no man had been sent without a full equipment of clothing for service. What happened in this case? No doubt, two squadrons were a small force; but it had been arranged that all the clothing should be prepared by the date of embarkation, which had been fixed for this force the 19th of this month. As a matter of fact, they had left Aldershot on the 18th, with the view of marching down to Portsmouth for embarkation. It had been arranged that the whole of the equipment to be used in the Soudan should be shipped for them on the trans-
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  port, but they were very properly to go down to Portsmouth in their ordinary clothing; and he would be glad to hear from the noble Earl whether ho thought that troops ought to march in February in England with clothing to be worn in the middle of summer in Egypt. As to the helmets being of a wrong pattern, that history was not difficult to explain. It had at one time been thought fit to give out pith helmets, and these had been designed for all branches of the Service. They had been sent to Aldershot two or three days before the start; but the officer in command sent a telegram to say that, in consequence of not having chin straps, they could not be used for Cavalry. It was impossible to attach straps to a pith helmet; but, on receipt of the telegram, a supply of ordinary helmets was sent down, and the troops started with these two kinds of helmets, and they would be at liberty to use one or the other of them. He ventured to say that there had not been the slightest confusion nor the least delay.
  THE EARL OF LONGFORDobserved that every word he had said had been borne out by statements of the noble Earl.

CRIMINAL LAW—THE BABBICOMBE MURDER—OFFICE OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONER.

  QUESTION. OBSERVATION'S.
  EARL COWPERsaid, he rose to call attention to the mismanagement attending a recent attempt at the infliction of capital punishment; and to ask, Whether it is not now the opinion of Her Majesty's Government that there should be a public executioner for the whole of the United Kingdom, appointed and removable by one of Her Majesty's Secretaries of State f The attention of all must have been attracted by a piece of great mismanagement on the part of the executioner at Exeter. He would not enter into details; but he thought that it was natural that he should take the present opportunity of once more bringing the matter forward. In this case, after repeated failures to hang him, the prisoner had been respited, which, perhaps, made the matter less horrible than it would otherwise have been. Although, the alternative of respiting a man who had committed murder in a most aggra-

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  vated form was, no doubt, a difficult one to choose, he could feel that the Home Secretary had been placed in a position of great difficulty, and of two evils had chosen the lesser. He did not wish to prejudge the matter, into which, no doubt, an inquiry would be made; but they could hardly think that the Sheriff could be blamed, or the Under Sheriff. As to the hangman, there was realty no such office; a man was only deputed for the occasion, and then disappeared. The Sheriff's duty was to see the sentence carried out, and he had to find anyone that he could. As a general rule, it was true, the same man was employed by the different Sheriffs in the different counties. What he wished, however, was that there should be one man for the whole country, and that he should be under the Homo Office and responsible to the Home Secretary. When he had brought forward this matter last year, ho had been mot by two objections. In the first place, ho had been asked why it was likely that the Home Secretary would make a better selection than the Sheriffs? In answer to that, he maintained that it would be easier to get a good man for a permanent place of, say, £200 or £300 a-year. Then another objection was that they could not expect to get a good man for the performance of such disgusting operations. But upon the last vacancy there had been no less than 800 applications, and it would surely be easy to get a man who could perform his duty out of so many. He might say, in passing, that there was such a general idea that it was a Crown office that the greater number of these 800 applicants had sent in their applications to the Homo Secretary. He was himself in favour of capital punishment, and thought that it was absolutely necessary in order to put a stop to murder; but no criminal ought to be unnecessarily tortured. If, however, they were to have occurrences like this, it would be difficult to retain it. The noble Earl concluded by asking the Question of which he had given Notice.
  LORD MONSONsaid, he was sorry that his noble Friend (the Earl of Dalhousie), who represented the Home Office in that House, was absent through ill health, and therefore not able to answer the Question. When the noble Earl (Earl Cowper) had brought this matter
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  forward on the last occasion, he had rested his arguments on the fact that the executioner was not a competent man in his profession, and that he was also not in a very sober state at the time of the execution. The unfortunate case which occurred yesterday morning at Exeter rested upon altogether different grounds. He would not go into that matter now, because it must be inquired into by direction of the Secretary of State. What he had now to state was that the Secretary of State yesterday took steps to have a strict investigation made into all the facts, and it was not yet quite clear that the fault of what happened yesterday morning lay with the executioner.

  PREVENTION OF CRIMES AMENDMENT BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill to amend the Prevention of Crimes Act, 1871—Was presented by The Earl of MILL-TOWN; read 1a. (No. 20.)
  WATER COMPANIES (REGULATION OF POWERS) BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill to regulate the powers of Water Companies which by any special Act incorporate the Waterworks Clauses Act, 1847—Was presented by The Earl of CAMPERDOWN; read 1a. (No. 21.)

  PRIVATE BILLS.
  Ordered, That this House will not receive any petition for a Private Bill after Friday the 13 th day of March next, unless such Private Bill shall have been approved by the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice; nor any petition for a Private Bill approved by the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice after Tuesday the 12th day of May next:
  That this House will not receive any report from the Judges upon petitions presented to this House for Private Bills after Tuesday the 12th day of May next:
  Ordered, That this order be printed and published, and affixed on the doors of this House and Westminster Hall. (No. 23.)
  House adjourned at Five o'clock, to Thursday next, a quarter past Ten o'clock.