BOROUGH

in Great Britain, incorporated town with special privileges or a district entitled to elect a member of Parliament. The medieval English borough was an urban centre identified by a charter granting privileges, autonomy, and later, incorporation. As an autonomous corporation, the borough functioned outside the general administrative hierarchy of the shire and hundred. From the 16th century the importance of boroughs as units of local government declined, but they gained a new importance as parliamentary constituencies. By the late 17th century, about 200 English boroughs were returning about four-fifths of the members of the House of Commons. By the early 19th century, the system of Parliamentary representation for boroughs had become antiquated, since depopulated boroughs controlled by the nobility and gentry were overrepresented while the growing industrial cities and towns were underrepresented. The First Reform Act of 1832 stripped many old boroughs of their representation and created many new ones centred on industrial towns. The reform of municipal corporations in 1835 gave English boroughs a uniform constitution and transformed them into modern units of local government. The Local Government Act of 1888 established county boroughs, which, unlike municipal boroughs, were empowered to act independently of administrative counties. In 1974, however, the British government abolished county boroughs in its reorganization of local government. In America the word appeared occasionally in colonial Virginia but was not widely used after the Revolution. Village, town, and city were the names most often applied to municipal units. The U.S. city corresponded most closely to the English borough as a full-fledged urban unit. In a few states where the borough was officially recognized, it indicated an incorporated town or village of lesser status than a city. The New York legislature adopted the name in 1897, when it combined five large areas known as the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Richmond to form the city of Greater New York. See also pocket borough; Reform Bill; rotten borough.