The council was amalgamated, along with most of its neighbours, with the City of Sydney to the north with the passing of the Local Government (Areas) Act 1948.

[2][3] Upon incorporation in 1859, the municipality was divided into three wards: Redfern, Waterloo and Surry Hills, each electing three Aldermen.

From the late 1910s and 1920s the Redfern area became increasingly populated by the unemployed and working class, employed by industry and the nearby Eveleigh Railway Workshops, resulting in the increasing domination of the Labor Party and left-wing groups in the area.

[7][8] As a consequence the council, traditionally held by the merchant and middle classes, frequently found itself divided on simple matters, including the election of the mayor, which required the Minister for Local Government and the Governor to instead appoint the mayor several times.

[15] By the end of World War II, the Government of New South Wales realised that its ideas of infrastructure expansion could not be effected by the present system of the patchwork of small municipal councils across Sydney and the Minister for Local Government, Joseph Cahill, following the recommendations of the 1945–46 Clancy Royal Commission on Local Government Boundaries, passed a bill in 1948 that abolished a significant number of those councils.