Town Commissioners

Town commissioners were elected local government bodies established in urban areas in Ireland in the 19th century. Larger towns with commissioners were converted to urban districts by the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898, with the smaller commissions continuing to exist beyond partition in 1922. The idea was a standardisation of the improvement commissioners established in an ad-hoc manner for particular towns in Britain and Ireland in the eighteenth century. The last town commissioners in Northern Ireland were abolished in 1962, while in the Republic of Ireland the remaining commissions were renamed as town councils in 2002.

The first town commissioners were established by the Lighting of Towns (Ireland) Act, 1828 (9 Geo. IV c.82). This was "adoptive" legislation, which ratepayers in the various boroughs could choose to enact in their community. As the existing borough corporations were ineffective as local authorities the act came into force in sixty-five towns. William Neilson Hancock explained the act in 1877 thus:

Thomas Larcom of the Irish Ordnance Survey wrote of the commissioners in 1846:

In 1840 the majority of Irish boroughs were abolished by the Municipal Corporations (Ireland) Act 1840, and the commissioners established by the 1828 act became the only local council. The town commissioners were recognised as successor to the borough, retaining corporate property and the municipal coat of arms. Any town with property of more than £100 that lost its borough corporation, but had not adopted the 1828 Act, was to establish "Municipal Commissioners". There was, in fact, only one town to which this applied: Carrickfergus in County Antrim.

The Towns Improvement (Ireland) Act 1854 (17 & 18 Vict. c.103) allowed electors of populous places to choose to establish town commissioners. This enabled many newer communities that had never had municipal status to gain local government bodies. Many of the towns governed by the 1828 act replaced this with the new legislation as it provided the commissioners with greater powers.

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