The London Government Act 1899 converted the parishes into Metropolitan Boroughs based on the same boundaries, sometimes with mergers or minor boundary rationalisations . Stoke Newington was smaller than the desired size for the new boroughs, and there were proposals to re-merge Stoke Newington and Hackney, or to detach the northern part of Hackney and join it with Stoke Newington. These proposals were rejected due to the experience of ""intolerable and interminable feuds"" between the districts when they were previously ""forced together"", and because Parliament recognised that there was ""great ill-feeling and mutual ill-will... between the inhabitants of the two districts"".