The city of Bath – the sometime home of Jane Austen, Mary Shelley and many other authors – is proud of its literary history. It is a little incongruous to note, then, that Bath was the last city in Britain to establish a free, taxpayer-funded public lending library.

The Public Libraries Act of 1850 allowed any English or Welsh borough of over ten thousand inhabitants to establish a free library, funded by a maximum increase in local rates of one halfpenny in the pound. (The same powers were given to Scottish and Irish boroughs in 1853.) Yet the act could only be adopted with the consent of local ratepayers following a public meeting and, if demanded, a poll to determine by how much rates would rise to fund the new service. During the second half of the 19th century, towns and cities up and down the UK witnessed vigorous – and occasionally vicious – campaigns over whether to found a lending library. 

While it may seem novel today, the local referendum was a familiar process to 19th-century Britons. This was an era of small government and low taxes, with self-help prioritised over state intervention. Parliament gave councils the ability to create new services but imposed no duty on them to do