England Voting Records

England Voting Records

Electoral Records
Some history of the various franchises is given here in order to understand the four main kinds of electoral records—freeholders lists, burgess rolls, poll books and electoral registers. The chart below lucidates the meanings of some words found in the documents.

Chart: Election Definitions

The Poor Law Franchise
By Gilbert’s Act of 1782 the election of guardians of the poor (in the few places that had them then) was given only to owners or occupiers of premises assessed at £5 or more. Some areas had less than ten people in this category and this restriction did not apply there.

Unions for most parishes were created in the New Poor Law 1834, and the guardians were elected by all owners of land and ratepayers rated for one year, in their respective parish unions. The number of votes varied according to their poor rate assessment.

The Public Health Act 1848 required local public health boards to be elected by all landowners and ratepayers. Again, the number of votes varied according to their poor rate assessment. Members of the boards had to live in the area or within seven miles. In boroughs the councils acted as the boards.

The Local Government Franchise
Local government enfranchisement was more comprehensive, earlier, than that for parliament. The most important forms of local government were:


 * Vestries

This was the most common form of local administration until well into the 19th century and could be either:


 * An open vestry at which all male ratepayers could speak and vote. From 1818 each ratepayer had between one and six votes depending on the amount he paid in poor rates. From 1819 it was possible for a small representative vestry or poor law committee to be appointed which generally consisted of the incumbent, churchwardens, overseers and some of the wealthier parishioners.

or;


 * A select vestry whose members were few and nominated by Parliamentary Act or co-opted, with no participation of ratepayers. By an Act of 1831 the select vestry could be chosen by the ratepayers, each one who had paid rates for one year having one vote for each vacancy. One third of this kind of select vestry retired each year.


 * Municipal Corporations Most boroughs had, until 1835, obtained their status by charter, which gave them various rights such as:


 * To levy a toll at the town market.
 * To send a representative to the House of Commons.
 * To hold a court dealing with civil and some lesser criminal matters.

The administering body, which may have been called by various names, perpetuated itself without public elections. Shelagh Bond describes the records, called hall books, of the borough of New Windsor 1653-1725 which are typical of any small borough.

The reform of the franchise for municipal elections came in 1835 and was similar to that of the 1832 Reform Act for Parliamentary elections (see below). Now, any man could vote who had:


 * Occupied a property in the parish as owner or tenant for 21/2 years, or
 * Had paid poor rates, or
 * Lived within seven miles of the borough for the previous six months.


 * Town councillors in the 178 boroughs affected were now to be elected for a maximum three-year term, although aldermen could serve for six years. Women with the necessary property qualifications and who paid rates could vote in local elections from 1869.


 * Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW)

In 1855 an overall local authority for London, the Metropolitan Board of Works, was established, mostly from nominations from the vestries. Underneath the MBW, district board were set up and their membership elected by the vestries.


 * County Councils and County Borough Councils

In 1888 elected county councils, as well as councils for towns with a population over 50,000 (County Boroughs) were organized. These took over the administrative responsibilities of the county quarter sessions and appointed their own medical officers. County councils were given further powers:


 * Housing and planning from 1890.
 * Elementary and secondary education from 1902.

However, outside the county boroughs public health was administered by urban and rural sanitary authorities. The records of these bodies are in local record offices, and county councils and county borough councils were abolished in 1974.

Local Government Outside London
In 1894 the civil functions of vestries outside London were transferred to new parish councils (parish meetings in rural areas); and urban and rural sanitary authorities became rural and urban district councils. All county and parliamentary electors were given one vote each and any electors, including women who had been resident for 12 months, were eligible for election.

Another local government Act of 1899 converted the London vestries into borough councils, with aldermen being co-opted by councillors. Women were not allowed to be councillors until 1907. A common franchise for county councils, boroughs, parishes and urban and district councils was established in the Representation of the People Act 1918.

Burial Board Franchise
The election of burial boards by vestries commenced in 1852 in London, and 1853 elsewhere. Board members had to be ratepayers.

School Board Franchise
The Education Act 1870 required the election of school boards by:


 * All burgesses in boroughs.
 * All parishioners rated for one year in London.
 * All ratepayers elsewhere.

The system was unusual in that each voter had one vote for each vacancy but he could choose to cast all his votes for one candidate.

For further details on local government and its elections see Richardson.

The Parliamentary Franchise
Before the 1832 Reform Act the House of Commons consisted of:


 * Burgesses elected by towns, with the franchise depending upon the borough’s customs and its charter. There were some boroughs in which all householders (known as potwallers or potwallopers i.e. anyone occupying a room with a fireplace at which they cooked their own food) had the right to vote, but in others only a few, such as freemen, had this right. There were a large number of rotten boroughs, whose population had declined dramatically but who still returned members to parliament. Many of them were controlled by a single landowner who bribed his constituents well, and were much resented by the growing industrial towns, especially in the north, that had very scant representation. An example is the town of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis in Dorset. In had fewer than 3,000 inhabitants in the 1760s yet returned four MPs. Reeves describes the situation in the rotten borough (and Cinque Port) of New Romney, Kent.


 * Knights of the shire elected by counties. This meant that large tenant farmers in the counties did not have the right to vote.


 * Representatives elected by Oxford and Cambridge and, from 1867, London universities.


 * A research enquiry concerning election bobbins led me to find that both Northampton and Bedford, centres of lace-making, were potwalloper boroughs where all adult men (approximately 60%) not receiving alms or poor relief had the vote before 1832. Many would have been husbands of lace-makers and distribution of free bobbins, with suitable slogans of-course, was a popular way of gaining publicity. There is a bone bobbin inscribed Vote for Althorp in the Abington Museum, Northampton—John Charles Spencer, Viscount Althorp held the seat for Northampton from 1806-1832.

The Representation of the People Act (RPA, but usually called the Reform Act) of 1832 largely corrected the geographical imbalance of seats but the majority of voters were still forty-shilling freeholders. Of the rotten boroughs 56 were disenfranchised and 30 reduced to one member only, whilst 22 new boroughs were created to send two members and 20 to send one member. Gibson and Rogers Poll Books (1990) has a map of pre- and post-1832 parliamentary representation as well as a list of general elections from 1715-1874, and there is interesting discussion by them and Herber (Ancestral Trails, 2003). The rotten borough of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis was reduced to two MPs in 1832 and in 1885 the town was merged into a county constituency (White).

The Representation of the People Act 1867 extended the franchise to over two and a half million men by reducing the property qualifications including the new £10 householders. In addition some 45 constituencies were redistributed.

The Representation of the People Act 1884 gave a further one and half million men the vote by reducing the qualification in the counties to be similar to that in towns. The next year a separate measure equalized the ratio of population to representation throughout the country.

Chart: The Parliamentary Franchise

The Representation of the People Act 1918 gave the vote to any man over 21 who could prove six month’s residence, regardless of value of rent etc. Many women over 30 were enfranchised, and plural voting, which gave as many votes to a man as he had residences in different constituencies, was abolished almost completely. Curiously, the university franchise was extended to graduates of all universities, in addition to their residential vote. The receipt of poor law relief no longer disqualified a person from voting. There were also some reforms in registration procedures and transference of responsibility to the Clerk of the borough or county, as well as having the polls open for one day only. The Equal Franchise Act 1928 gave women the same voting rights as men, and the 1948 Representation of the People Act abolished both the university vote and the city of London constituency so everyone had only one vote. There were also those who were disqualified from voting at various times, such as:


 * Aliens, unless naturalized since 1870.
 * Anyone convicted of election bribery, for five years thereafter.
 * Commissioners and most collectors of government revenues before 1918.
 * Election agents and others paid to help at elections until 1918.
 * Felons i.e. anyone serving a prison sentence.
 * Idiots.
 * Lunatics, although not if in a temporary period of lucidity.
 * Many customs and excise officers (until 1918).
 * Peers of the realm (for parliament as, until very recently, they were entitled to sit in the House of Lords). Peeresses were qualified from 1918-1963.
 * Perjurors.
 * Police serving and for six months thereafter (until 1887).
 * Postmasters (until 1918).
 * Those receiving public alms, their spouses and children until 1918.
 * Those whose names have been omitted from the register.
 * World War I conscientious objectors 1918-1923.

Poll Books 1694-1872
Returning Officers were required from 1696 to compile a list of voters and how they voted. This was to prevent irregularities in parliamentary elections by biased returning officers. The electorate was limited to freeholders so was quite small at this time. Soon after, the poll books were produced commercially so many copies were available up until 1872 when the free vote came in. The parliamentary poll books for boroughs often contained only a dozen or so names, and may have been published in the local newspaper instead of a booklet. Most poll books are for parliamentary elections but some were published for elections of county coroners.

Typically a poll book had a preface with something about the candidates and their opinions, so you may learn about your ancestors’ political leanings. The lists of voters are arranged by hundred and then in alphabetical order of parish and vary in the amount of information that they give about voters. Some have only the names and who they voted for, whilst others have addresses and occupations of the voters, and what freehold land they held in order to qualify. The front page of the poll book gave the poll results, and there may be notations in the lists of those who were absent, neutral, removed (moved away) or deceased. The candidates’ names may appear as abbreviations or initials only at the head of the columns, and the two votes allowed each voter may be marked with a forward slash in the originals but by a horizontal line in printed editions. Some copies have been used by canvassers for the next election who added notations about the voters.

A poll book for Maidstone in 1754 is shown in below and Guy Lawton (Burgess Rolls and Poll Books - A Detective Story. Family Tree Magazine Vol. 16 #12, page 4-6) shows how parish registers, burgess rolls and poll books aided his research.

Chart: 1754 Maidstone, Kent Poll for The Knights of the Shire (from Thomson-Gale website)

Other examples include:


 * A list of the names of the persons, together with the places of their freehold and abode: who voted for knights of the shire for the county of Bucks, at the last election held at Allesbury [now Aylesbury], September the second and third, 1713 is on and examples from it and from the 1839 Buckinghamshire poll book are given by Markwell and Saul (Facsimiles of Documents of Use to Family Historians, page 72-73, 1987)).


 * Newcastle Poll Book 1722-1723 is on.


 * Bath Poll Book 1855, Banbury Poll 1859 and 1865, were published inexpensively by the Open University (Drake).


 * The poll for electing two burgesses, for the King’s town and borough of Maidstone, in the county of Kent: 1830, 1807, 1820, 1859, 1865 including an index is on found under FHCL - ENGLAND - KENT - MAIDSTONE - VOTING REGISTERS.


 * At the FamilySearch Catalog COUNTY level are the original editions of polls for knights of the shire of Kent 1734, 1790 and 1802 on ; and also a series of new printings by the Kent FHS for 1734, 1754, 1790 and 1803 for Kent, and 1835, 1837, 1847, 1852, 1857, 1859, 1865 and 1868 for both the Eastern and Western Divisions of Kent. The new printings are in microform but are not for circulation to FSCs, as fiche copies are sold by the society which produced them.

An 1841 poll book for Westminster confirms that there were, indeed, two men called Thomas Abbott who lived in Silver Street at that time (Chart below).

Chart: 1841 Poll Book St. James Parish, Westminster, Middlesex

Good collections of poll books are held at:


 * Bodleian Library, Oxford
 * British Library
 * Family History Library, Salt Lake City both in printed form and on film.
 * Guildhall Library
 * Institute of Historical Research, University of London
 * Society of Genealogists (Newington-Irving).

Others can be found locally at county record offices (who are likely to have any surviving original manuscript lists as well) and reference libraries; some have been reprinted as booklets or on fiches by the Society of Genealogists and FHSs (for example 1775 Surrey) or commercially. Some are found in auctioneers’ catalogues, and Gibson (Poll Books for Sale. Genealogists’ Magazine Vol. 23 #7, page 264, 1990) has interesting commentary on this subject.

Gibson and Rogers’ Poll Books (1990) is the standard listing of extant material, (mainly for parliamentary elections) and where it is held, but much is filmed and hence more accessible for most researchers via the FamilySearch Catalog under the sections termed VOTING REGISTERS for counties and towns. The sections on Great Britain and England just give handbooks and catalogues etc. with little on film as they are still in print and available from FHSs and the Society of Genealogists. Excellent discussion on the subject of poll books can be found in Cannon (Poll Books #2 in Short Guides to Records edited by Lionel M. Munby, 1972), Gibson and Rogers (Poll Books c1696-1872: A Directory to Holdings in Great Britain, 1990), Harvey (Telephones, Ratepayers and Buff Books. Some 19th and 20th century Sources at Guildhall Library. Genealogists’ Magazine Vol. 25 #5, page 177-180, 1996) and Herber (Ancestral Trails, 2003).

Electoral Registers 1832-date
Prior to 1832 the land tax assessments were used as the basis for electoral lists, especially the printed forms 1780-1832. Since 1832 registers of parliamentary electors have been made annually except 1916-1917 and 1940-1944 (when the 1939 list was used). During 1919-1926 and 1945-1949 the registers were compiled twice a year. Electoral registers have always been open to public scrutiny with no closure period, so they are a good source for 20th century research. They are different from poll books in that they record only the entitlement to vote, not the vote itself. The 1832 Reform Act greatly enlarged the county franchise, and necessitated registration of every person qualified to vote in each parish, and the publication of these registers. The qualification to vote was the holding of property and entries give:


 * Name of elector.
 * Abode.
 * Property (owned or leased) that qualified him to vote, with its name and situation in the locality.

Later the registers include voters’ addresses including house number or name.

The franchise was gradually extended so the lists became more comprehensive. Since 1928 they list the names and addresses of all adults who have registered.

Extensive bribery and corruption attended elections until 1872; votes were literally bought, and since your affiliation was in print for all to see, many pressures were brought to bear on electors. The last General Election where who you voted for was noted was in 1868, secret ballots (the free vote) being introduced from 1872. County and borough rate books were compiled from the latter part of the 19th century and were used as the basis for the right to vote in municipal and county elections (see section on rates). Since these were wider than the parliamentary franchise there are more people included, an example is given below.

Chart: 1897 Parochial Electors List Whippingham, Isle of Wight, Hampshire

Recent Electoral Registers
Since 2002 there have been restrictions on access to electoral rolls less than 30 years old, and two separate versions:


 * A full version kept by theElectoral Registration Officer and used only for electoral purposes and by the police.


 * An edited version for any other use (such as direct mail and genealogy) where voters may choose to be omitted (Hawgood’s Two Electoral Registers. Journal of One-Name Studies Vol. 7 #12, page 25 and Stockdill’s New System is a Bad Idea!. Journal of One-Name Studies Vol. 7 #12, page 25). Let us hope that by the time our descendants need to use them the full versions will be open to public scrutiny.

The current (edited) electoral roll is online at 192.com for a fee. It contains names, addresses and telephone numbers (unless ex-directory) and is also available on CD. Modern electoral registers are known to have some duplicates—people listed twice with the same address but different postcodes.

Read more about electoral registers in Gibson and Rogers’s Electoral Registers Since 1832; and Burgess Rolls (1990) who also have a good section on sources of inaccuracies in electoral registers; Harvey (Telephones, Ratepayers and Buff Books. Some 19th and 20th century Sources at Guildhall Library. Genealogists’ Magazine Vol. 25 #5, page 177-180, 1996) especially for the extra registers for the City of London; Herber (Ancestral Trails, 2003) and Wood (Did Your Ancestor Vote? Family Tree Magazine Vol. 13 #2, page 55-57, 1996). Weeds (Election Fever. Practical Family History #25, page 16-18, 2000) conjures up the real flavour of the pre-1832 elections, illustrated with Hogarth’s series of election paintings.

National Registration Scheme 1915
There was a World War I Adult National Registration Scheme in 1915 which, had it survived, would have made a most useful census. However, only the records for Yeovil, Somerset, and Barrowford, Lancashire seem to be extant (Tom Wood 2002).

Other Political Election Records
There are plenty of other records kept by political parties around election times, for example (Healey):


 * Accounts.
 * Annotated copies of electoral registers.
 * Correspondence.
 * Ex-servicemen willing to act as Special Constables on polling day.
 * Invitation lists.
 * Lists related to the need to capture women’s votes in 1928.
 * Members and subscriptions paid.
 * Minute books.
 * Names and addresses of people willing to help with canvassing, office work, driving a car on polling day etc. There is a nice story of my maternal grandmother requesting from the Conservatives a ride to the polling station. When they turned up at her house they found it was the headquarters of the local Labour Party, as my grandfather was a staunch and active organizer. I bet there was a bit of muttering going on!
 * Organizers of fundraising events.
 * Party officials at county and district levels.
 * Possible defectors.
 * Those present at meetings.

It is a mistake to dismiss pre-1928 electoral registers of various kinds as containing too few people in too high an economic level to be worth the researcher’s time. Even if your ancestor couldn’t vote, maybe someone else in the family could—a brother, father, husband, uncle or in-law, perhaps. However, the touted value of electoral lists to provide at least the geographic areas where the surname occurs is really only useful if indexes are available. Census indexes for the period 1841-1901 are now more easily available than electoral lists, but the latter are valuable for geographic location of the surname prior to and after this time.