In Manchester voting in the Parliamentary election of 1844

“This day may be characterised as one of great activity, bustle and preliminary preparation, on both sides, for the completion of the canvas, and for bringing up the voters”*

Manchester Guardian, May 1844

And in the 171 years since the election of 1844 little has changed for the election team, the candidates and the voters.

So while there is not the violence or the bribery and voting is carried out in secret there is much that would be familiar to a voter from 1844 looking at an election today.

They might be surprised at how restrained the candidates were when talking about each other and mystified at the lack of dirty tricks and intimidation practised by the leading members of the political factions.

But they would be at home with the banners and posters and the sheer excitement of the outcome.

Yesterday we followed our 27 voters into Manchester from Chorlton where they voted at the Bush Inn on Deansgate.

James Bracegirdle, Methodist

They were a mixed bunch of “gentlemen,” business types and farmers.  Over half qualified to vote by virtue of owning property while the remainder were tenant farmers.

But only two were absentee voters, which contrasts with another rural area down south where just fifty percent lived in the place they cast their vote.**

It is a practice which sits a little uncomfortably with our modern ideas of democracy as does the practice of voting openly and having your vote recorded in the Poll Books.

Now not all of these Poll Books have survived but where they do they give a fascinating insight into how a community might vote.  Of course some care has to be taken with them.

Our 27 represented about 9% of the entire adult population and there is plenty of evidence that the open nature of voting led to some tenants feeling that they could be intimidated by the landlords.

Just nine years earlier the vote in Chorlton mirrored the wishes of the big Tory grandees who forcibly expressed their preferences.  So of the sixteen tenant farmers who were qualified to vote, twelve farmed land from one of these big Tory landowners.

They may not have voted for the “big family’s wishes” and it is equally possible that they shared the same outlook, but as we saw yesterday the Tory candidate received 72% of the vote here.

Jeremiah Brundrit, Methodist

Of course some of our electors were well off enough to be independent of any such intimidation and this may have included the small group of Methodists.

In total we have the names of 72 Methodist families who were active in the years up to 1851 out of a total of 119 families.  Not all of these have revealed their occupations but of those who have, seventeen  were farmers and market gardeners, nine  in trade and retail, forty four were labourers, one, Betty Moores was a charwoman and one a servant.***  
There were also a policeman, a coachman and a sailor.

Few of the farmers worked large amounts of land; most were market gardeners making a living from less than 5 acres.

But even given this middling to lowly economic status Chorlton Methodists represented a large number of those entitled to vote in the reformed Parliament.

In 1832 of the 21 electors, eight were Methodists of which 5 were freeholders and three tenant farmers.

I doubt that will ever know whether they went together to Manchester to vote and sadly the Poll Book for 1844 is not available so it is impossible to hazard who they voted for or if they all voted the same way.

At least we know that James Holt of Beech House consistently voted Tory.  He had a fine house in a large estate stretching from the corner of Beech Road, down to High Lane, along High lane almost to Cross Road and back along Cross Road to Beech Road.  He had made his money in calico engraving in Manchester and moved from his fine house in St John’s Street to Chorlton in the 1830s.

But he retained his right to vote in Manchester and had two votes.  And his story is for another time.

Pictures; from the Manchester Guardian, May 1844, Jeremiah Brundrit and James Bracegirdle from the Wesleyan Handbook, 1909, data from the electoral register for 1832

*The Manchester Guardian May 29 1844
** This was Eltham in Kent where only 35 of the 67 electors lived in the district.
*** Beech Road Baptismal Records 1807-1847 from The Register of Baptisms, In the Wesleyan Chapel Radnor Street Circuit 1830-1837, microfilm MFPR2120, Local History Library Manchester City Council Libraries, Beech Road Baptismal Records 1807-1850,

“that wickedness, whereby an hundred thousand Africans are annually murdered” ………stories of Chorlton and slavery .... part 1

I doubt that anyone will be surprised that there are links between Chorlton-cum-Hardy and the slave trade.

Thomas Walker, 1794

I first visited the links* a few years ago prompted by a new onsite database on the Legacies of British Slave-ownership and reprised the story recently. **

But long before that, I had come across the remarkable Thomas Walker, who had lived at Barlow Hall, and was the Boroughreeve*** for Manchester.

He was at the centre of radical political thought arguing for civil liberty, constitutional reform and the abolition of the slave trade.

In a letter to John Cartwright he condemned “that Christian wickedness, whereby an hundred thousand Africans are annually murdered” and in another letter sought  help from Edward Cartwright, the  inventor of power loom to procure “me a list of Wool Spinners and other manufacturers to whom our [abolitionist] papers might be sent with effect.”

And as Chairman of the Manchester Anti Slavery committee along with Thomas Cooper, and others, he saw the opportunities for building on the growing opposition in Manchester to the slave trade.  He turned the visit of Thomas Clarkson in 1787 into a major propaganda event by persuading Clarkson to preach at the city’s Collegiate Church.

It was a great success, as Clarkson remarked “when I went into the church it was so full that I could scarcely get to my place; for notice had been publicly given.  I was surprised, also, to find a great crowd of black people standing in the pulpit.” ****

The success of that Sunday sermon was followed up by a petition to Parliament which the Committee had already planned.  In all over 11,000 people called for an end to the African trade.  This amounted to one fifth of the city’s population reflecting working class opposition to the slave trade and the practical campaigning skills of Walker and the others.

But for every Thomas Walker there was a Wilbraham Egerton whose family had owned great chunks of south Manchester including Chorlton-cum-Hardy since the mid 18th century.

I missed his connection to the Slave trade but was alerted to it by Cllr Dave Rawson of Chorlton Park Ward, and I went looking on that database.

The Insurrection, 1824

And there he was, listed as, “a trustee and executor for Mrs L.W. Boode in place of James Dannett, a role he shared with John Earl Brownlow".

Together as trustees they applied for and were granted on November 30th, 1835, £10058 15s 4d as compensation for the 185 individuals who had been slaves on the Greenwich Park plantation in Demerara in British Guiana.

The same database records that Greenwich Park had been owned by Margret Boode, née Dannett from 1817, passing to her daughter in 1826.

Back in 1817 the plantation owned 201 slaves, which had fallen to 190 in 1832.

Just how Wilbraham Egerton came to be a trustee is as unclear, but I know he took over from James Dannett, and that his fellow trustee, was related to the Egerton’s.

Nor is that quite all, because the Legacies database also records a young Emily Lawes Pink, who was born in Jamaica in 1819, lived in Chorlton on Medlock and was buried aged just 19 in our own parish graveyard, here in Chorlton.

The Egerton's proposed three routes for their new road, 1853

The Pink family also owned slaves, but as yet I can not make a connection with Chorlton-cum-Hardy, but it will be there, and in the fullness of time will be revealed.

I did however come across an account of the “Insurrection of the Negro Slaves in the Colony of Demerara” ***** in 1823, which was published the following year.

And this may offer up more information on Greenwich Park.

All of which leaves Wilbraham Egerton, who was a class ridden old representative of the aristocracy, opposed to any progressive moves during his time in Parliament and after.

And that in turn offers up the uncomfortable link with the road that bears his name.

The favoured route crossing Barlow Moor Lane, 1853

Or maybe not.

Wilbraham Road was planned in the 1850s and was not cut for another decade.

By which time Wilbraham Egerton was dead.

And it is likely that this superhighway linking Stretford through Chorlton to Fallowfield was the work of his son or grandson.

Wilbraham Egerton died in 1856 and was succeeded by his son William, who named his son Wilbraham.

Of course, the Egerton Papers, may well include details of the deliberations that led to both the road and to its name. *******

We shall see.

Location; British Guiana, and Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; Thomas Walker, 1794, front cover, Account of An Insurrection of the Negro Slaves in the Colony of Demerara, 1824, proposed routes for what was to become Wilbraham Road, 1853

*Who in Chorlton owned a slave in the summer of 1831? https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/05/who-in-chorlton-owned-slave-in-summer.html

**Legacies of British Slave-ownership, UCL, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/


***"The regulation of the police is in three officers, viz a Boroughreeve or Head-Borough, and two constables.  These officers are annually elected in October by a jury of the Leet summoned by the Lord of the Manor.  The Boroughreeve is considered the principle officer, presides at public meetings, is applied to upon all public business, has the distribution of certain charities...”  Walker, Thomas, A Review of some of the events of the last five years, London 1794 page 23, Google edition page 194

**** Correspondence of Thomas Walker, quoted from Culture Minister defers export of anti slavery campaigner’s letters, Department of Culture, Media and Sports, February 25 2010

*****Clarkson, Thomas, History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishments of the Slave Trade, John Parker, London, New Edition 1839, Page 244, Google edition page 263

******Account Of An Insurrection of the Negro Slaves in the Colony of Demerara which broke out on the 18th of August, 1823, Bryant, Joshua, 1824

********Egerton Papers, M24 /1/15, Central Ref

Who in Chorlton owned a slave in the summer of 1831?

One who didn't, Jeremiah Brundrett

This is not such a sensational question as you might think.  

Slavery permeated deep into both our economy and our society and contrary to the popularly held belief it was not just the big cities of Liverpool, Bristol and London that benefited from both the Slave Trade and the produce grown and made by slave labour.

And even after the abolition of the trade in 1807 it would be another twenty-six years before slavery itself was abolished and on terms that saw the owners compensated to the tune of £20 million.

Now I had assumed that most of that tax payer’s money went to a small group of large plantation owners based mainly in the West Indies, but the final settlement according  to Legacies of British Slave-ownership extended to  "over 45,000 claimants, and about 3,000 of them were living in Britain in the 1830s. 

Although claimants living in Britain were in the minority, they tended to own the largest stakes of property; about £10 million of the total £20 million compensation was paid to these 3,000 people in Britain. 

Many were very wealthy but there were a wide range of claimants, from rich landowners to widows with children who wrote to the compensation commission complaining of their poverty." 

The site  and can be found at Legacies of British Slave-ownership, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/

It is the “umbrella for two projects based at UCL tracing the impact of slave-ownership on the formation of modern Britain: the ESRC-funded Legacies of British Slave-ownership project, now complete, and the ESRC and AHRC-funded Structure and significance of British Caribbean slave-ownership 1763-1833.

Colonial slavery shaped modern Britain and we all still live with its legacies. The slave-owners were one very important means by which the fruits of slavery were transmitted to metropolitan Britain. We believe that research and analysis of this group are key to understanding the extent and the limits of slavery's role in shaping British history and leaving lasting legacies that reach into the present. 

The stories of enslaved men and women, however, are no less important than those of slave-owners, and we hope that the encyclopedia produced in the first phase of the project, while at present primarily a resource for studying slave-owners, will also provide information of value to those researching enslaved people.

We are now tracking back to 1763 the ownership histories of the 4000 or so estates identified in that project. At the core of the completed project is this online Encyclopedia of British Slave-ownership containing information about every slave-owner in the British Caribbean, Mauritius or the Cape at the moment of abolition in 1833. 

Entries include information about the activities, affiliations and legacies of these men and women, with a particular emphasis on the "absentee" owners based in Britain.

The records of the Slave Compensation Commission, set up to manage the distribution of the £20 million compensation, provide a more or less complete census of slave-ownership in the British Empire in the 1830s. The individuals named in these records form the starting point of the Encyclopedia.

And the data base can be searched by name, or browsed through the subject headings of “commercial, cultural, historical, imperial, physical and political.”

So armed with the names of our most prominent residents I trawled the data but so far have drawn a blank.

Even The Rev William Birley who had lived here in the 1840s before moving to Salford and who publicly supported the Confederate States in the American Civil War is missing from the list.

But it is early days, and there are still plenty of people who may have an interest.

Leaving that aside here is a wonderful introduction into that world.  Just looking at the 36 who applied each with the surname of Brooks there was Joseph Walrond Brooks who was awarded £32 16s 5d for two slaves in Antigua, Amelia Brooks from St Elizabeth in Jamaica awarded £253 15s 8d for her 10 slaves and George Brooks from Manchester in Jamaica who was paid £2478 13s 1d for his 212 slaves.

Nor is that all, for abolition did not actually mean abolition for only slaves below the age of six were freed in the colonies.  All those over the over the age of six were re designated as "apprentices", which was abolished in two stages; the first set of apprenticeships came to an end on 1 August 1838, while the final apprenticeships were scheduled to cease on 1 August 1840.”

Ah well as I often maintain history is messy, and with a sideways nod to my old self, it is a story which often chronicles those with power and money coming out on top again and again.

Pictures; Jeremiah Brundrett leading Chorlton Wesleyan, Chorlton, detail from the OS map of Lancashire 1841-53, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

Stories of Chorlton and slavery .... part 2 .....From plantation to Chorlton-cum-Hardy by Dave Rawson*

In July 1838 a young woman born in Jamaica was buried in the Chorlton graveyard. 

St Clement's and the parish burial ground, circa 1870

My interest in this young woman was roused because she is mentioned in the pages of the UCL Legacies of British Slave - ownership project. **

The young woman was 19 year old Emily Lawes Pink, she was one of 8 children whose father was a major plantation owner in the parish of St Ann. Not only did her father own two plantations but her mother held one in her own right.

Unfortunately, we do not know how Emily came to be living in fashionable Chorlton on Medlock in the 1830’s but we do know something about her origins.

Her father was John Pink and her mother was Rebecca Hiatt. As mentioned, they had 8 children together but were never married. A line in John's will may explain why. Rebecca was described as, ‘my respected friend and housekeeper’. Also when we see the baptism records for their first son, we see that he is recorded as a ‘free quadroon’. It is reasonable to surmise that Rebecca was of mixed race and therefore marriage was out of the question at that time. However it would appear that to all intents and purposes they led a married life and the children were raised in the family home. We also know that Rebecca was in fact the daughter of one of the most powerful Planters in Jamaica and was bequeathed one of her father's estates on his passing.

The Pink's plantation of Drax Hall was one of the largest in the parish and was worked by 275 slaves. Sugar was milled with a ‘modern’ water wheel and this helped to make the plantation one of the wealthiest in Jamaica.

The parish burial ground, 2008

In August 1834, the Slavery Abolition Act came in to force and this is when planters such as John Pink started to receive their compensation. Pink received over £7000 (almost £5.5 million today) but also, as part of the settlement he was allowed to keep his workforce as ‘apprentices’ for a further 6 years without having to pay them.

John Pink died in 1834, Rebecca had already passed away in 1829 and his vast estates and wealth was shared out between his children. They each received very large allowances until they were 21 and then earnings from their ownership share in the estate which continued to be run by a son.

Emily and other siblings end up in England as wealthy young people. They seem to have gone to different parts of the country and become part of genteel society. Why did Emily settle in Manchester? It would be wonderful to learn more about her short life and times in Manchester, the daughter of a Jamaican plantation owner.

Dave Rawson © 2020

Dave Rawson, is a Manchester City Councillor for Chorlton Park Ward

Location; Jamaica, Chorlton-on-Medlock, Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture, Chorlton Parish Church, circa 1870 from the collection of Tony Walker, and the burial ground, 2008, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*“that wickedness, whereby an hundred thousand Africans are annually murdered” ………stories of Chorlton and slavery .... part 1, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/07/that-wickedness-whereby-hundred.html

**Legacies of British Slave-ownership, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/

The murder of Mary Moore from Chorlton out in Whalley Range and an inquest in Withington

The murder of Mary Moore in June 1838 shocked the township of Chorlton, gave rise to lurid stories in the papers, three trials of the men suspected and was never actually solved.

Her gravestone can still be seen in the parish church yard on the green not far from where she lived.

She died out on a lonely lane near Dog House farm in what is now Whalley Range.

Dog House farm was run by the Chorlton family who farmed on the edges of Chorlton.  And Mary worked for them.

One of her jobs was to take the farm fruit to the markets three times a week, and it was while returning alone with the money that she was beaten across the head and left to die in water filled ditch close to the farm.

Suspicion fell on a group of strangers out from Manchester playing pitch and toss nearby.

All were arrested and at the inquest held at the Red Lion they were presented as rough and ready and not at all nice to know.

But despite the press having become convinced of their guilt they could all prove that they were in Manchester at the time of Mary’s death.

By one of those rare chances the bag Mary had been carrying was tracked to Hulme and police now arrested a thoroughly disreputable chap who had worked at the farm and been overheard to ask questions about Mary’s route and the amount she regularly carried.

Moreover he fitted the part, with a list of temporary jobs, a dishonourable discharge from the army and a succession of addresses.

In short a drifter, and one who seemed on the margins of shady doings.

The inquest found him guilty and he was sent to trial at Liverpool.

Now the story twists and turns, not least because it was about a Chorlton woman who was murdered out in Whalley Range which was technically in the township of Withington.

The rest and there is lots more is in the Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.*

Pictures; newspaper report from the Manchester Courier June 23rd 1838, detail of where Mary worked from the OS map of Lancashire 1841, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/  gravestone from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*THE STORY OF CHORLTON-CUM-HARDY, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html

Just who could vote in Chorlton in 1836?

Chorlton-cum-Hardy electors in 1836

We are just four years after the great Reform Act, which provided a degree of uniformity to who could qualify to vote in Parliamentary elections, gave votes to the new industrial cities and towns of the North and along the way actually disenfranchised some people.

And here in Chorlton in 1836 that still amounted to just 30 men, which were just 9% of the adult population.

Now I remain fascinated by who they were and how they voted.  Up until recently it was down to looking through the records held at the Local History Library at Central Ref, but now an increasing number are available on line at ancestry.co.uk.

What is more fascinating is that these Poll Books also contain the record of how each man voted enabling the historian to gauge the political complexion of an area.

But we have to be careful about just what we can learn from these records.

Chorlton-cum-Hardy electors in 1836

To vote in an election was to vote in the open.  There were no niceties like secret ballots.  A man’s choice was clear to all and if he were a tenant or tradesmen he might well feel obliged to follow the political line of his landlord or chief customer.

All of which is there in the story of the 1835 General Election and one that is covered in The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.*

In the meantime I shall just reflect on what the digitalization of records has made it easier to search that vast storehouse of historical sources.

Now there are some who rubbish those of us who sit at a computer to research the past.  For them there is no substitute for holding the original document confident in the knowledge that all but a few will have handled it since it was written perhaps two centuries ago.

This is all true but if you live in Manchester and the records are sitting in a library in Ottawa or even just down the road in London that access is less easy.

Labour Party poster, 1931 aimed at women voters

Added to that the search engines cut the time of searching, although I have to say even with such short cuts you can get side tracked and pass endless hours wandering around.

And in a few cases the search engines seem to lose material which once prevented me from finding the registration of my own birth.

It is true that you are at the mercy of what the company has decided to copy but that only raises the bigger issue that so many records have been lost already either through negligence, accidents, or bad luck.

And then there are the acts of crass stupidity like the decision to put the entire records of the Derby Workhouse on a skip a long time ago.

So I am not only thank ful for what has survived but pleased that it is available like the records of electors.

Here are their names, their qualification to vote and on election years the record of who they voted for.

And with a bit of cross referencing it is possible to work out their religion, and whether they might be at the mercy of a powerful landlord.

All of which is good stuff.

But doesn’t help us much with the political preferences of the rest, for as important as the 1832 Reform Act may have been for laying down a marker for future reform it still left only something like 3% of adults with the vote.

Added to this of course not one women was enfranchised.  They would have to wait another 86 years and another decade would pass before virtually everyone over the age of 21 could vote in a General Election.

For these their first ever parliamentary election would be in 1929, and the ground breaking 1945 contest would be but their third.  So when you do the sums it is a sobering thought that we have only been a democracy for 85 years and until recently there will have been women and some men who passed well into the middle years of their lives before they could choose a government.

Pictures; from the 1836 Poll Books of Lancashire courtesy of ancestry.co.uk and the London Metropolitan Archives, City of London Libraries, and the Labour Party

*The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html

Getting the vote in ……………….. 1842 in the midst of a General Strike

We are in the old Manchester Town Hall and the year is 1842, and despite the fact that the weather had been cloudy with persistent showers all week, there will have been better places to be.

Applications, 1842

Unless of course like me you are fascinated by the minutiae of elections, or like Mr. Edward Worthington representing the Conservative Party and Mr. Caistor for the Liberals, you were engaged in the vital job of protecting the electoral future of the respective parties. *

Because over three days in the September of 1842, the business of the Town Hall was the “revision of lists of voters of the southern division of Lancashire”.

And that wasn’t some petty bureaucratic exercise, but a serious tussle upon which the outcome of the next election in the constituency might turn.

The South Lancashire seat had been formed following the Great Reform Act of 1832 and had alternated between the Whig/Liberals and the Tories during the next decade. **

Part of the subsequent electoral successes of the Tories during the period had been down to the way their electoral machine, the ruthless way they had manipulated the registering system and more than a big dollop of voter intimidation at a time when you cast your vote in the public gaze and your choice was recorded.

Added to which there was the backdrop of turbulent times, occasioned by the General Strike of 1842 which “involved nearly half a million workers all over Britain, and was probably the first strike anywhere that can be called general.  Coming at the height of the Chartist campaign for basic democratic rights in Britain, it began as a movement of united resistance to the imposition of wage cuts in the coal, cotton and engineering industries.” ***

But it took on a political dimension and became an all out struggle for universal suffrage backed by Executive of the National Charter Association “it spread from Lancashire Staffordshire and the West Riding, through to the coal fields of Scotland and South Wales, to the poverty stricken woolen weavers of Somerset and Norfolk.  Lasting up to six weeks and resulting in over 1,500 arrests and numerous clashes with troops” ****.

And all of this was very close to home, with a strike in Staybridge on August 13th which was followed by stoppages across the town, and into Ashton, Manchester and out to the surrounding towns.  At Preston four men were shot and six died in Halifax.

So, there was a seriousness on the part of the two political parties of property to maximize their vote.

Of course, this was 1842, and qualifications to vote were very restrictive, resulting on a small all-male electorate.

Applications 1842

But that didn’t stop Mr. Worthington for the Liberals questioning the application of John Higginbotham who was “claimed as occupier of a house and 23 acres of land in Didsbury”.  The Liberal objection, turning on whether, Mr. Higginbotham was the owner or just the occupier.

Likewise an objection was made to another applicant, because application failed to mention that the address was in Stockport, while another was opposed because despite the applicant claiming to be the occupier of land worth £50 a year, he paid no tax, and therefore could not be said to be the occupier.

The hearings stretched over three days, with the Guardian commenting that on the opening day “the proceedings were of little interest. 

A great number of names were struck off the list in consequence of removals and a few from insufficient description”.

Here in Chorlton, it appears there was no great stir, with no change to the lists, where only 31 men in the township were entitled to vote which was just 16% of all men over the age of 21, and 9% of the entire adult population.

This was still better than the national average which in 1833 stood at just 7%. *****

Leaving me just to observe that back then Chorlton-cum- Hardy was no radical out post.   In the 1835 election the voters of Chorlton were split, with seven voting for the Liberals, and 19 for the Tories, while in Didsbury the vote ran Liberals, 9, Tories 20, and in Withington the Tory share of the vote was 67%. ******

Location, South Lancashire

Pictures, tables from the Manchester Guardian, 1842, graphs derived from data from the Leeds Mercury 1835, and cover of The General Strike of 1842

*County Revision, Manchester Guardian, September 28, 1842

**1832 two Liberals were returned, 1835, 1837, & 1841, two Tories, and in 1844 by election the voters returned one Tory and the Radical William Brown

**** Jenkins, Mick, The General Strike of 1842, 1980

***** Simpson, Andrew The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 2012

******Leeds Mercury, January 31, 1835

Finding one of those rare relatives who had the vote in 1832 .............. more records go online

Now if you want to find out if your ancestor voted in the 1830s then the Poll Books and Directories are the first port of call.

James Brundrett, a man with a vote

They are the records of all who were eligible to vote, will offer up how they qualified to vote and can also show who they voted for.

Not of course that any of mine back in the 1830s voted.

I am fairly confident that  all of our lot will not have qualified for the vote for another fifty-four years and it would then still be another thirty-four before some of the women in the family could take part  and not till 1928 that all my female ancestors had a vote in General Elections.

All of which puts the idea that we were a parliamentary democracy into perspective.

That said these Poll Books and Directories are immensely useful to anyone wanting to know about the history of where they or their family lived.

Not all have survived and those that have can be scattered across the country in reference libraries and local studies centres.

But more and more are on line.  Ancestry has been adding them and now today Findmypast has announced that they too now offer up the opportunity to “search through over 62,000 records to discover who your ancestor voted for in the election of 1830. This valuable census substitute can also include details of their occupation, residence, religious beliefs and even a short biography.”

James Bracegirdle, another who could vote

So even if yours like mine could only watch as the small group of electors cast their votes in the open the records allow you to dig deep into an area.

Here in Chorlton-cum Hardy in 1835 only 31 men in the township were entitled to vote which represented just 16% of all men over the age of 21, and 9% of the entire adult population. This was still better than the national average which in 1833 stood at just 7%.*

They were a mixed bunch of freeholders and tenant farmers.

And armed with their names it is possible to cross check them against the rate books, the tithe schedule, land and tax assessments  and census returns.

So as well as Chorlton I have wandered through Eltham where I grew up  and worked out who voted there which just leaves me Peckham where I was born to search.

And for anyone wanting to learn about those 31 Chorlton electors, they are all well documented in the book on Chorlton-cum-Hardy. **

Pictures, two Chorlton electors, Jeremiah Brundrett and James Bracegirdle from the Wesleyan Handbook, 1909, 

*Britain in the Nineteenth Century 1815- 2005, 2005, Chris Cook

**the Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 2012, Andrew Simpson, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html