Village Administration and Local Government in B. G. 349 
Sanitary Districts created under the 1878 Ordinance looked after the 
other parts of the colony. Thus it will observed that outside Georgetown 
and New Amsterdam there were two systems.— 
a.) The Villages working under the Village Ordinance of 1892 and the 
) 
Public Health Ordinance of 1878; and 
(b.) The Country Districts working under the Public Health Ordinance. 
These laws continued in force until 1907, when Ordinance No. 13, 
the Local Government Ordinance, was passed; this Ordinance con- 
solidated the Village Orainance of 1892 and the Public Health Ordinance 
of 1878 into one comprehensive act. The gradual development of 
the 1892 Act showed that it was necessary to apply some of the 
administrative enactments of the Village Ordinance to the Country 
Districts. 
The Central Authority also found that working the administrative 
side of the Incorporated Villages under one Ordinance and the sanitary 
side under another was cumbersome and non-progressive, and the want of 
a consolidated Ordinance dealing comprehensively with both subjects 
became an absolute necessity. The Country Districts between 1892 and 
1907 had also made great strides and the need of more liberal adminis- 
trative machinery than the Public Health Act provided them, was being 
almost daily felt. 
The task of consolidating the two Ordinances was, in the first instance, 
undertaken by the then Colonial Civil Engineer, Mr. A. G. Bell and myself, 
after which the Ordinance in embryo was passed on to the Government 
and following some necessary revision and alterations by the Attorney 
General was then passed by the Court of Policy in 1907, becoming 
Ordinance No. 13 of that year. By this Act the Local Government 
Board was created. 
At this point it may be well if I shortly give an epitome of the Local 
Government Ordinance which, on its becoming law, in my opinion, has 
marked another big step forward in the history of all phases of village 
administration. 
Previous to 1907 the functions of the Board were performed by the 
Central Board of Health, acting as already stated under the Public 
Health Ordinance No. 3 of 1878 and the Village Ordinance No. 6 of 
1892. Our Public Health Act of 1878 was modelled on the English 
Public Health Act of 1875, most of its sections, being lifted without 
alteration, from the English Act and enacted in our Local Act of 1878. 
In framing our Local Government Ordinance which is, as already 
pointed out, a consolidation of the Public Health Act of 1878 and the 
Village Ordinance of 1892, a large number of the sections of the first 
mentioned Act were re-enacted in the consolidated Act and are similar in 
every respect with sections of the English Publie Health Act of 1875, 
