The Cheltenham Improvement Act of 1852 was ‘an act for better paving, draining, lighting, cleansing, supplying with water, regulating in regard to markets, interments, hackney carriages, and other purposes, and otherwise improving the borough of Cheltenham’ and replaced an earlier act passed during the reign of George IV. Very simply, it gave the necessary powers to do whatever was needed in the town. Each of the five wards of Cheltenham returned six Commissioners but the Act required two to stand down on rotation each year with elections held annually to replace or reappoint them on 20 November.
The Montpellier Baths was polling station for the South Ward as evidenced in a notice given in the Cheltenham Chronicle of 13 November (right).
Septimus Pruen, returning officer for Middle Ward in that election, was a solicitor who published the entire Act in book form, with his own preface, for the benefit of all residents of Cheltenham (or at least the proportion that could read) in 1853. It can still be read today via Google Books – if you really want to!
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