The Select Committee of Parliament on Town Holdings ran for nearly six years, finally reporting in 1892.
Its chair was Lewis Fry, a solicitor and town councillor from Bristol.
The rapid expansion of the population of industrial cities and towns in the early years of the nineteenth century led to the growth of vast urban slums.
The realization that overcrowded living conditions were a danger to public health resulted in several parliamentary investigations on town planning.
The committee was appointed on 18 March 1886 with the membership of Mr. Mellor, Mr. Wodehouse, Lord William Compton, Viscount Wolmer, Mr. Asher, Mr. Lewis Fry, Mr. Edward Russell, Mr. Conybeare, Mr. Goschen, Sir Henry James, Mr. Lawson, Mr. Saunders, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Mr. Gibson, Mr. Macartney, Mr. Tyssen Amherst,[1] Viscount Folkestone, Mr. Sidney Herbert, Mr. Gregory, Sir John Ellis, Mr. Bartley,[2] Mr. Crilly, Mr. O'Dogherty, and Colonel Nolan [3] The 1897 report included a census of housing which includes details of leases and building operations in progress as well as of the number, quality and types of houses in two hundred and fifty large towns in England and Wales.