of Towns Bill is now applied to Hastings, and consequently, the management of the whole proceedings of the borough is now vested in the hands of the Town Council, except the small portion of it called St. Leonards – Mr. Burton having, unfortunately, for that town succeeded in getting it exempted from the sanitary measures consequent upon the introduction of that Act. The proceedings in this case and the jobbing influence apparent in all its stages, deserve, perhaps, a record in this simple history of the town; both because it will give some notion of how things are done at the Woods and Forests and how great is the fear and enmity of Mr. Burton towards Hastings”. It then goes on to describe briefly what in these pages have been given in detail, respecting the House of Commons proceedings in connection with the application by Hastings for the said Act of Parliament, and of its being referred to a committee to report. “By that committee” says the Guide, “St. Leonards was expunged, and that town now stands forth as the only part of the borough which private interests compel it to be proclaimed not subject to proper sanitary control. It may here be remarked that Mr. Burton, in trying to prevent Hastings from having a clean bill of health, because he objected to St. Leonards having one, is only paralleled by Lord Seymour who set the law at defiance at the instance of the same family”.
Mr. Burton did not object to the Health of Towns Bill except in so far as it included his own town, for which, as being more recently built and for other reasons, there was not the same necessity. He distinctly stated at the Council meeting on July 26th, 1850 “I have nothing to say against the Act being applied to Hastings, but I demur to any attempt to force it upon St. Leonards against the wish of the majority of its inhabitants”. In connection with this subject, Ald. Scrivens (a native of the Old Town and one of the most intelligent members of the Council) said although he would like to see the Health of Towns Act applied to the whole borough, if he were in the place of Mr. Burton he should most likely do as Mr. Burton did. The same gentleman, when he was Mayor, in 1850, presided at the Trade Protection Society’s dinner, and proposed “Prosperity to St. Leonards”, expressing at the same time his gratification at seeing both towns gradually advancing towards each other, and hoped that ere long the union would be complete. In the following year (1851) when the Hastings Corporation attended by invitation the solemn service of laying the foundation stone of the St. Mary Magdalen Church (see Memoirs of Rev. W. Hume) Mr. Ross and his party, instead of joining the clergy and West Ward Councillors at the Saxon Hotel, where luncheon was specially prepared, took themselves off in a body to the Castle Hotel at Hastings. Such -
