Mary’s Ward, an area where zymotic diseases were so prevalent that the death rate reached twenty-six per thousand - double that of affluent suburban Edgbaston.36 Invoking the powers granted to local authorities by Richard Cross’ Artisans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Improvement Act, Chamberlain ordered the demolition of 653 houses in the area to make way for Corporation Street, the main thoroughfare of this newly ‘improved’ town. The fact that this new development, paid for by the local ratepayers, would eventually be lined with boutique shops housed in opulent buildings commanding high rents for the Council and investors, rather than improved artisan’s dwellings, was obviously a matter of much controversy. Indeed, only 62 houses had been rebuilt as late as 1885, providing homes for a minority of the 9,000 inhabitants expelled.37 To make matters worse, Chamberlain’s Liberals in the Town Council had always made it clear that such housing would be replaced and used the language of the Civic Gospel to justify their arguments; during the elections of 1875 the Birmingham Post declared that the purpose of Chamberlain’s Scheme was ‘the clearing and remodelling of unhealthy areas, so as to improve the houses of artisans, and thus to raise vitality and lengthen the duration of life’.38 The real intention of the Improvement Scheme was becoming clear to Chamberlain’s opponents who pilloried him and the endeavour. Many accused him of betraying the principles on which it had been marketed and for championing what was increasingly seen as a financially irresponsible investment racket whose beneficiaries would be limited to the entrepreneurial classes.39 They were not unjustified in their criticism. The annual burden of ‘improvement’ on the rates came to double the £12,000 originally projected by Chamberlain and revenue from the scheme did not exceed expenditure until 1892.40 Furthermore, in 1877, John Lowe, a former Conservative councillor of the ‘Economist’ sensibilities that men like Dawson had long castigated, highlighted Chamberlain’s bullish and dissembling tendencies, ‘greater men
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