[1] In the November 1883 issue of National Review Conservative Party leader Lord Salisbury wrote an article titled "Labourers' and Artisans' Dwellings" in which he argued that the poor conditions of working class housing were injurious to morality and health.

[4] On 4 March 1884 a Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes was set up under the leadership of Sir Charles Dilke, including Salisbury, the Prince of Wales, Cardinal Manning, Henry Broadhurst, George Goschen, Jesse Collings, Bishop of Bedford, and Richard Cross as members.

[5] Its Report was published in 1885 and contained a mixture of Salisbury's proposals for government loans and subsidies and the more collectivist Dilke-Chamberlain ideas of increasing the local councils' powers.

He further claimed that the Act would be "strangling the spirit of independence and the self-reliance of the people, and destroying the moral fibre of our race in the anaconda coils of state socialism".

Salisbury responded: "Do not imagine that by merely affixing to it the reproach of Socialism you can seriously affect the progress of any great legislative movement, or destroy those high arguments which are derived from the noblest principles of philanthropy and religion".