MUNICIPAL PARKS 
1 35 
for the benefit of the poor. It had been purchased 
and enclosed, the deed specified, “ for the prevention 
of any new building thereon.” Of this ground 9 acres 
form the present Garden; on part of the remainder 
St. John’s Church was built, and in 1872 the Bethnal 
Green Museum, an offshoot from South Kensington, 
was opened on another section. The most exhaustive 
work on Municipal Parks says that when the land 
“ came into the possession of the London County 
Council ” it “ consisted of orchard, paddock, kitchen 
garden, and pleasure grounds, all in a rough and 
neglected condition.” Under the levelling hand of 
the London County Council it has been made to look 
exactly like every other public garden, with “orna¬ 
mental wrought-iron enclosing fences, broad walks, 
shrubberies,” and so on, at a cost of over £5000, 
and was opened in 1895. There is no trace of its 
former condition, nothing to point to its antiquity or 
any difference in its appearance from the most modern 
acquisition. Perhaps after all it is as well, for among 
the thousands of that poor and crowded district that 
use and enjoy it, there is not one to whom a passing 
thought of the old weavers who were settled there 
when the land was given, or to whom the legend of 
pretty Bessee the Blind Beggar’s daughter of Bethnal 
Green would occur. Though the design is prosaic, the 
gardens are made cheerful and gay, and if they add 
a gleam of brightness to the lives of toil of those living 
near them, they must be said to fulfil their purpose. 
Victoria Park 
Victoria Park was the first of the modern Parks to 
be laid out, and it is the largest. When the advantage 
