A history of Didsbury in just 20 objects number 2 ........... the polling book …. 1836

Now most people will know that there was a time when few people could vote in elections, but I am always taken aback by just how few that was.

Didsbury in 1853

Here in Didsbury, the total population who were over the age of 21 in 1841, was 1,789, but those entitled to cast their vote in Parliamentary elections amounted to just 52, and of course all the 52 were men.

Added to which 30% of those electors, didn’t even live in Didsbury.

Now this I know because of the Poll Books, which are a list of voters entitled to vote by virtue of a property qualification.

They are a wonderful resource, providing the name of each elector, where they lived, the nature of their qualification and the location of that property.

And for good measure, the entry also provides the name of who lived in each property, many of whom were tenants, which extends our knowledge of who was resident in Didsbury in the year the register was compiled.

% of electors living in Didsbury in 1836

And that is very important, because apart from the census returns, there are few documents which offer up the names of people who were not either wealthy or in trade.

The first census to record individual names, was the 1841 census and while there are parish records for births deaths and marriages, these can be fragmentary, and early directories, tend only to list the “people of plenty”.

So, with names of even the humblest, it is possible to visit the rate books and search for both owners and tenants, and that will yield how much they paid in rates, as well as the estimated rental value of the property.  These rate books were compiled every year and so it is possible to track the movements of an individual tenant or property owner around Didsbury.

And that is particularly useful given that the time between each census was ten years, and many street and trade directories are not inclusive.

There is of course the tithe record, which lists who owned the land, who rented it, its value and it's use.  It also came with a map, which makes it easy to plot where people lived, but these were one off exercises.

The Didsbury Hotel, once the Church Inn, circa 1860-70

So, our Poll Books are a fascinating insight in to Didsbury, more so because in an election year they also record how people voted.

This was after all, a time before the secret ballot and how you voted was seen by everyone who attended on the day of the election and was recorded for everyone to read..

Alas our Poll Book dates from 1836, a year when there were no Parliamentary elections, so I cannot find the voting preference of Samuel Bethell who interests me because he was for a time the owner of the Church Inn which sometime after 1855 was renamed the Didsbury Hotel.

He also owned the smaller beer shop known as the Prince Albert, which stood roughly on the corner of Millgate and Wilmslow Road.  The Church Inn had a rateable value of £74 which was matched by its near competitor the Old Cock, but was far ahead of the Prince Albert which paid just £14.

That shouldn’t be a surprise given that in the 1850s, the Prince Albert appears to have been run by John Arnold who was also a blacksmith and the beer shop may well have been a secondary venture.  So far, he has proved elusive and is not on either the 1841 or ’51 census, and while there is a John Arnold on the Poll Book for 1836, I do not think this is he.

Detail of the Didsbury Hotel, 1860-1870

But there are 73 names on the Poll Book which pretty much opens 72 more investigations which in turn may tell us a lot more about Didsbury back in 1836.

And along the way I might also uncover more about Mr. Bethell, who according to one Didsbury historian “acquired squatter’s rights over the space [in front of the Church Inn] by enclosing it with boundary stones sometime between 1821 and 1855 and treating it as his own”. **

In so doing he will have deprived the villagers of an open space, leaving me to reflect that such a dastardly act may also have led him to watering down the beer.

But that may just be one scurrilous accusation too far.

We shall see.

Location Didsbury

Pictures; Didsbury showing the Church Inn and Old Cock, 1853, from the OS for Lancashire, 1841-53, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ and the Didsbury Hotel, formerly the Church Inn, 1860-70 from the Lloyd Collection

*Poll Book, 1836, Didsbury, Southern Division of the County of Lancaster, page 62-63

** A History of Didsbury, Ivor R. Millon, 1969, page 25

Just how did Didsbury vote in 1835?

Now every General Election will have a clear set of issues which the political parties offer answers to, and as the Brexit train moves on into even more uncertain times, I was reminded of the 1835 General Election.

Didsbury Village, 1853

It followed just three years after the Great Reform Act reshaped our electoral system, creating the South Lancashire Constituency of which Didsbury, Withington and Chorlton-cum Hardy were part of.

The General Election which followed the Reform Act saw the  two Whig candidates elected, who went on to play their part in the reforming Whig government which prepared the way for a uniform system of local government, created a new way of administering benefits to the poor, unemployed and old, abolished slavery in the Empire and had made some inroads into factory reform. 

But after two years there were divisions within its ranks and some outside who were unhappy with its record. 

The radicals were disappointed that the Reform Act had not gone further and was now seen as an end to further Parliamentary change.  The urban working class were again organising themselves industrially and through the Chartist movement demanding a vote in elections. 

The parish church, 1852

In the rural areas poverty had led to widespread riots at the beginning of the 1830s and the Whig Government made martyrs of six Dorchester farm labourers who had protested at falling wages. 

And while certain sections of the population thought the Government had been too hard on these Tolpuddle Martyrs, there were others who felt the Whigs had not gone far enough in quelling the rural disturbances during 1830and 31.

And both the urban working class and the rural farm labourers were hostile to the 1834 Poor Law which had created the Poor Law bastilles and stigmatised any who needed parish relief.    Against this background there was also a Tory revival which saw it gain ten seats in by-elections between 1832 and 1833.

From the outset the Tories were determined to win.  Their leader Peel had issued a clear statement of policy which appeared to promise both change and stability. 

It was contained in an address to his own electors in Tamworth, but its real intention was to signal to the country that the Tory party could deliver reform where it was most needed but would also conserve the best of the old. 

Didsbury's electorate, 1836

The Reform Act was a reality which Peel would not overturn and it followed that in the same spirit of improvement there should be “a careful review of institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, undertaken in a friendly temper combining, with the firm maintenance of established rights, the correction of proved abuses and the redress of real grievances, -”.   But there was to be no further extension of the vote, “the reform bill was a final and irrevocable settlement of a great constitutional question”, and the Tories were opposed “to a perpetual vortex of agitation”.

By contrast the Whigs were divided and complacent and up against a sleek Tory electoral machine, which was as ruthless in the  way it manipulated the registering system as it was in intimidating voters at a time when you cast your vote in the public gaze and your choice was recorded.

How Didsbury voted in 1835

The degree of that intimidation was reported widely in the press who also remarked on the Tory’s monopoly of cabs which they used to ferry their own to the nomination meetings.

Of course, the Didsbury electorate was small, with just 52 men, entitled to vote out of a total population of 1,789.

We will never know just the degree to which intimidation and corruption played a part in Didsbury, although across the border in Stretford, Thomas Joseph Trafford of Trafford Park instructed his tenants to vote Tory, and all but one of them did just that. The level of potential intimidation was all too clear from the one tenant who refused to follow the line.  He expected “in the spirit of the olden times, to hear of Tory vengeance.” 

According to one London newspaper quoting the Manchester Guardian “Mr Egerton of Tatton, we understand personally headed up his tenants, and waited on the booth whilst they voted”.

How Chorlton voted in 1835

As it turned out, 9 of the electorate voted Liberal and 20 voted Tory, with similar results in Chorlton-cum Hardy where the split was 7 voting Liberal, 19 for the Tories and in Withington the Tory share of the vote was 67%.

Leaving me just to search the records to see how far the voters in Didsbury were connected in some way to the Tory Egerton family which owned most of south Manchester.  A similar search in Chorlton showed significant links.

Pictures; Didsbury showing the Church Inn and Old Cock, 1853, from the OS for Lancashire, 1841-53, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ Didsbury Parish Church, 1852, from from A History of the Ancient Chapels, Rev. J Booker, 1852, and tables taken from data published by the Leeds Mercury, January 1835.

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