The identification of preliminary boundaries

The 1831–2 boundary commission identified boundaries for England’s new parliamentary boroughs in a manner similar to that for existing boroughs – by defining the modern extent of the town associated with the borough and allowing space for its future growth (see Chapter 5). However, unlike in England’s existing boroughs, this process was complicated by Schedules C and D of the reform bill, which since March 1831 had provided every new borough with a preliminary boundary. The 15 September version of the government’s second reform bill (the details of which had been agreed to as the commission commenced its work) identified a specific boundary for twenty-four new boroughs based around particular parishes or townships, and a non-specific boundary for the remaining boroughs, which stipulated that the ‘town’ of the borough should form its parliamentary limits.⁵ These preliminary boundaries had been under discussion since December 1830, when the committee of four began drafting the reform bill, and were identified for three reasons. First, to provide the opportunity to those within the vicinity of a new borough – like the parish officers of Oldham’s townships – to make a claim for inclusion within its limits. Second, in order that elections could take place in the event of a reform bill passing through parliament, and a privy council committee (as it had initially been planned) not being able to identify parliamentary boundaries. And third, when the reform bill was announced on 1 March, eight boroughs identified for enfranchisement were amalgamations of towns or administrative divisions, rather than a single place.⁶

These amalgamations of districts, in particular, revealed the limits of the 1821 census data initially used to identify potential new boroughs, the committee of four’s limited geographic knowledge (or ready access to maps) of the boroughs they proposed to enfranchise, and the fluid, if not haphazard, nature of cabinet negotiations over the reform bill ahead of its publication. The Staffordshire boroughs of Wolverhampton and Walsall are cases in point. In March 1831 the first public version of the reform bill stipulated that the borough of Wolverhampton should consist of the townships of Wolverhampton and Bilston and the parish of Sedgley. In January 1831 the committee of four had initially proposed to enfranchise all three towns as separate single-member boroughs, as each had a population of over 10,000 according to the 1821 census.⁷ Concurrently, in late January, Littleton lobbied the cabinet for the ‘equal claim of Walsall’, after he had heard that Gateshead was to be enfranchised due to its importance to the manufacturing interest.⁸ Neither Gateshead nor Walsall had been included in the committee of four’s initial list of unrepresented towns with a population above 10,000, but when their entire respective parishes were taken into consideration they met this threshold.⁹ The only difficulty was that there was no spare seat to be assigned to Walsall, prompting a compromise solution based on Littleton’s local knowledge of Staffordshire. By February he had informed the cabinet that, as Wolverhampton, Bilston and Sedgely adjoined each other, they could be combined into a double-member borough, freeing up a seat for Walsall.¹⁰

Following this, the government identified preliminary boundaries for as many boroughs as possible ahead of the publication of its first reform bill, by resort to local knowledge, census data, published maps and, probably, topographical dictionaries.¹¹ As a result, twenty-two new boroughs were provided with a specific preliminary boundary in the first reform bill, and nine were given unspecific boundaries, stating that ‘the town of’ the borough should form its limits. The reliance on census data, in particular, led to the assignment of very wide preliminary boundaries to Blackburn and Bradford, initially defined by their parish.¹² The frenzied manner in which these preliminary boundaries had been compiled, and an acceptance among ministers of their geographic ignorance about the fine details of England’s new boroughs, meant they were more than willing to take on board suggestions from the localities to fine-tune their proposals.

As a result of this consultation between Westminster and the localities, between March and September 1831 parliament modified the preliminary boundaries of twenty boroughs.¹³ In seven cases, specific preliminary definitions were changed to unspecific definitions. On 5 August, for instance, Bury was changed from ‘the township of Bury’ to ‘the town of Bury’.¹⁴ In the remaining thirteen cases, townships or parishes were added to, or removed, from a borough’s preliminary definition. These changes took place following parliamentary debate, petitions from local inhabitants and private representations to cabinet members. Parliamentary debate was integral to the shifting definition of Bradford’s preliminary boundary, originally defined in March 1831 as the ‘parish of Bradford’. This was reduced in April to the ‘township of Bradford’, following a parliamentary return that revealed the government’s misinterpretation of the 1821 census (this return prompted similar changes to Blackburn, Dudley and Tynemouth).¹⁵ Bradford’s preliminary boundary was amended again on 5 August, after the MP for Hedon, Robert Farrand, and the Whig MP for Yorkshire, Viscount Morpeth, complained that Bradford stretched across three townships, but not the entire parish of the same name.¹⁶ Following this, Bradford’s preliminary boundary was changed to the unspecific ‘town of Bradford’. As Morpeth advised the Commons, this allowed Bradford’s definition to be ‘left to the [boundary] commissioners’.¹⁷ The specific preliminary boundaries of Blackburn, Brighton, Bury, Tynemouth and Wakefield were removed for the same reason.¹⁸

Petitioning and private representations were central to the alteration of Manchester’s preliminary boundaries and Salford’s eventual enfranchisement as a separate borough. The urban settlement associated with Manchester lay in the parish of Manchester, which comprised twenty-nine townships.¹⁹ The government’s first reform bill proposed that eight of these townships (including Manchester and Salford) should form the parliamentary borough of Manchester, based on the 1821 census.²⁰ However, in April 1831 the government agreed to enfranchise Salford as a separate single-member borough, along with two of its neighbouring townships of Pendleton and Broughton. This followed private representations to the cabinet from the inhabitants of the township of Salford, who contended that their interests were distinct from those of the neighbouring township of Manchester and that their population of over 50,000 entitled them to separate representation.²¹ The preliminary definition of Manchester was then further amended in May 1831, following a petition from the township of Bradford, Lancashire. These petitioners successfully requested that Bradford be included in Manchester’s boundaries, as its inhabitants were employed either in the collieries that powered Manchester’s cotton factories, or in Manchester itself.²²

Petitions relating to the boundaries of five further boroughs – Bury, Halifax, Oldham, Rochdale and Whitehaven – were submitted to parliament. Those from Bury and Whitehaven were motivated by concerns with local landed proprietors, the earls of Derby and Lonsdale respectively, assuming control of politics in their future boroughs.²³ The petitions from Halifax, Oldham and Rochdale were prompted by a mixture of protest at the government’s confused employment of census definitions, internal political manoeuvring and a civic desire for enfranchisement.²⁴ Of these only one petition (that from the townships of Chadderton, Crompton and Royton, discussed above, asking to be included in the limits of Oldham) was entirely successful. The other four prompted the government to provide unspecific preliminary definitions for each borough in order that the commissioners could settle the issue.²⁵

In addition to Salford, private representations to MPs or the cabinet prompted changes to the preliminary boundaries of Birmingham, Cheltenham, Huddersfield, Lambeth, Stoke-on-Trent, Whitby and Wolverhampton. Most of these requests appear to have been motivated by the genuine civic desire of a town’s inhabitants to be included in a borough.²⁶ This was evident in Birmingham (Map 7.1), whose preliminary boundaries underwent a series of amendments between March and August 1831. When the reform bill was first announced, the omission of the parish of Edgbaston from Birmingham’s preliminary boundaries was raised by the moderate Birmingham Journal, which suggested that the government’s ‘ignorance of the population’ of Birmingham threatened to exclude a ‘very great proportion of the respectable merchants and manufacturers’ from the borough. In the context of the Birmingham Political Union’s petitioning efforts in favour of the reform bill (which did not specifically mention the town’s boundaries but brought several key figures in the town into contact with the cabinet), the editor of the paper urged ‘representations’ to ministers on the issue, which by April had led to the addition of Edgbaston as well as the townships of Deritend, Duddeston and Nechells to the borough’s preliminary limits, and the exclusion of the parish of Aston.²⁷

While electioneering was already in full swing in the proposed borough, these amendments do not appear to have prompted any political controversy locally. Neither did a subsequent amendment in August, following a private representation from the inhabitants of the township of Bordesley to Francis Lawley, Whig MP for Warwickshire. The independent Aris’s Birmingham Gazette provided an intriguing insight into how this request led to an immediate amendment to the reform bill:

A communication on the subject [of Bordesley] was in consequence made last week to Mr. Lawley, by whom, … the case was immediately brought under the consideration of Lords Althorp and Russell; and by return of post, an assurance was received … that Bordesley now forms part of the bill.²⁸

By contrast to Birmingham, partisan motivations clearly lay behind alterations to Whitby, where Richard Moorsom, the borough’s future Liberal candidate, successfully lobbied Lord John Russell to add the townships of Whitby, Ruswarp and Hawsker to its preliminary boundary. As will be discussed below, Russell was aware that such a boundary favoured the ‘liberal interest’ in the constituency and did all in his power to ensure it remained in place.²⁹

This consultation between the localities and Westminster over the boundaries of new boroughs meant that by the third Commons reading of the government’s second reform bill on 15 September, parliament had settled on specific boundaries for twenty-four new boroughs. As it was not originally intended to subject the boundary commission’s proposals to full parliamentary scrutiny, it was not clear whether the commission had the legal authority to overturn these boundaries. Although the government had refused to publicly commit to their finality, they were only initially willing to allow the commission to overturn specific preliminary boundaries if they contained an ‘obvious omission or error’.³⁰ By October 1831, however, Drummond had successfully advocated for more extensive powers. He had discovered that extensive, usually agricultural, districts, unconnected with a town’s immediate population, had been included in a number of preliminary boundaries. In a small number of cases, such as Whitby, it was also confirmed that the impetus behind the identification of preliminary boundaries had been political. The presence of inconsistent boundary proposals, as well as a fear that partisan considerations had been allowed to influence the boundary-setting process, underlined the necessity, for Drummond, of a consistent application of his ‘scientific’ framework for identifying boundaries.

Proposing boundaries for the new boroughs

The majority of England’s new boroughs were in the north, west midlands or the south-east of England, meaning the commissioners in districts H, G, E and A visited a disproportionate number in comparison to their colleagues (see Table 7.1). As in the existing boroughs, the commissioners and their surveyors made their boundary recommendations following a cartographic and socio-economic survey, and the collection of £10 householder and boundary data in each new borough (see Chapter 4). Most new boroughs had undergone a period of rapid socio-economic growth during the previous decade, and on average, had increased in population by 29 per cent since 1821. This compared to an average increase of 8 per cent across England’s existing boroughs, and 4 per cent across boroughs scheduled to be disfranchised in 1832.³¹ These averages mask some extremes, such as Bradford whose population had increased by 78 per cent since 1821, as well as four new boroughs whose populations had actually decreased since 1821 – Whitby, Whitehaven, Frome and Tynemouth. The increased rate of demographic growth across the new boroughs was reflected in the commissioners’ reports and willingness to propose extensive boundaries that allowed for future population growth.³² In Bradford, commissioners Romilly and Allen reported that:

… the population in the last ten years has nearly doubled, and factories and buildings are fast increasing … the rapid spread that the town seems to be making in all directions, presents a considerable difficulty in laying down a boundary as would take in every thing that is desirable, without giving to it an unusually wide extent.³³

Table 7.1: Location of new boroughs by boundary commission district.

The commissioners’ attempts at predicting future growth in the new boroughs were also complicated by newly built, or proposed, railways, which had already become a significant factor in the urban landscape of England’s northern manufacturing economies by 1831.³⁴ The commission’s final published map of the aforementioned Bradford is notable for its spider-like tentacles in the south-east of the borough, marking the recently built, private railroad network of the Bowling Ironworks.³⁵ In north-east England, the proposed development of railways and the expectation of exponential future economic and demographic growth led to the proposal of some very wide boundaries. Commissioners Tancred and Wrottesley proposed an extensive boundary for Sunderland that allowed for the planned development of coal mines to the south of the town – the development of which had only been made viable by the ability of rail to transport large amounts of coal through the ‘rural townships’ to the south of Sunderland.³⁶ On the south of the Tyne, the new borough of Gateshead was found to contain a wide variety of thriving industries: ‘… great grindstone quarries are situated in the midst of the parish; and within it are extensive manufactories of chain-cables, heavy iron work and steel, and also of glass and other valuable commodities’. This, combined with the discovery that ‘a railroad is in contemplation, for which a survey has been made, and subscriptions entered into’, prompted the commissioners to affix an additional area to the government’s already wide preliminary boundary for the borough, which the town had already expanded beyond.³⁷

Where new boroughs were in a less flourishing state, the space allowed for future growth tended to be reduced accordingly. The commissioners discovered that the decrease in Whitehaven’s population since 1821 had resulted from Liverpool supplanting the town as the chief exporter of coal to Ireland during the 1820s.³⁸ In Frome, the commissioners reported that the ‘employment of powerful machinery’ had ‘superseded human labour’, and that as a result many of the inhabitants had emigrated to America and Canada. With little prospects for future expansion, a tight boundary was proposed around both boroughs.³⁹ The recently opened Liverpool to Manchester railroad was found to have depressed the economies of two new boroughs. Warrington had lost the daily business of ‘seventy public carriages’, which had previously travelled through the town between Liverpool and Manchester.⁴⁰ And commissioner Romilly was sceptical about Bolton’s prospects for future growth, which had ‘probably been injured, and will continue to be so, by the greater advantage which the new rail road has given to Manchester’. Even though Bolton had ‘a large trade’, he reported, it ‘is suffering a considerable depression … the place has not a thriving appearance, and its unequal supply of foot pavements, the number of its narrow streets, and lanes, and the want of drainage generally give to it an air of discomfort at every turn’.⁴¹ As a result, Romilly recommended a smaller space for Bolton’s future expansion than he had been in the habit of doing elsewhere.

Wherever possible, the commissioners made use of existing administrative divisions when designing new borough boundaries – either ancient townships or parishes, or recently created boundaries for municipal purposes. Doing so had several practical and legal advantages. It obviated the need for the commissioners to draw a new boundary; pre-existing limits tended to be well known within localities; avoiding the creation of additional boundaries reduced the potential for confusion or legal dispute within a locality; and the practice was consistent with some preliminary boundaries identified in the reform bill. Drummond commended Allen and Romilly’s decision to use the existing circular boundary provided to Rochdale by its 1825 Lighting, Cleansing and Watching Act. ‘A multiplicity of boundaries’, he reminded them, ‘is so great an evil’.⁴²

Existing ancient boundaries, particularly townships in the north of England, were also convenient as they tended to allow ready-made space for future expansion. Although North Shields’ population had decreased slightly since 1821, a considerable amount of building was found to be in progress, particularly in the township of Chirton where a new railroad to Newcastle upon Tyne was in development. The commissioners initially considered cutting off a portion of the township from their proposed boundary, but reported that: ‘on considering [Chirton’s] commercial character, its great and rapid increase in population, and the small comparative breadth of its northern portion, it seemed … better to abide by the old established boundary’.⁴³ A preference for the use of ancient boundaries, as well as the time constraints that the commissioners were under, also led to the provision, in some instances, of too much space for future expansion. This was the case in both Blackburn and Warrington, which were not predicted to expand at the same rate as Bradford, Sheffield or Sunderland. In both cases, however, Romilly and Allen preferred to abide by established boundaries, instead of acting on Drummond’s advice to consider a reduced, arbitrary boundary.⁴⁴

Arbitrary boundaries were only proposed when boroughs exhibited little propensity for future expansion, or if existing ancient boundaries were found to extend too far from a borough’s immediate population. When these scenarios occurred, the commissioners defined the immediate populations of new boroughs by contrasting manufacturing, commercial or town-based populations with their rural or agricultural surrounds. At Wakefield, commissioners Wrottesley and Tancred proposed a boundary that encompassed the entire township of Wakefield as well as parts of the surrounding townships of Alverthorpe, Stanley and Thornes, which they reported were ‘intimately connected’ with the prospective borough.⁴⁵ When in Wakefield, the commissioners discovered from an ‘old man (whom seemed a staunch reformer)’ that the inhabitants of the remaining parts of Alverthorpe, Stanley and Thornes had expressed a desire to be included in the parliamentary borough due to their regular attendance at Wakefield’s weekly market.⁴⁶ After investigation, however, they deemed that these outlying areas were ‘chiefly agricultural district[s] … very little connected’ with the town of Wakefield.⁴⁷ As Wakefield was deemed unlikely to expand much further, the commissioners used an arbitrary boundary to define the borough by its immediate community, which excluded its secondary, more agricultural, community (even though Wakefield was a market town for the surrounding townships). This report, which was held up by Drummond as an exemplar, was printed and distributed to the other teams of commissioners to help ensure their work was ‘as perfect and as uniform’ as possible.⁴⁸ Similar explanations were provided for arbitrary boundaries in the equally dormant boroughs of Kidderminster, Kendal, Frome and Whitehaven.⁴⁹

Arbitrary boundaries were also proposed in the more flourishing boroughs of Gateshead, Bury, Macclesfield and Halifax. In each instance parts of an ancient parish or township were excluded from a borough due to their ‘rural’ or ‘agricultural’ nature, or because the immediate population associated with a borough was deemed unlikely to expand into these areas.⁵⁰ Agricultural populations were not always discounted, however. In Wolverhampton, Walsall, Stoke-on-Trent (which was in reality a collection of six towns) and Stroud, the commissioners discovered that the farming and manufacturing populations of each locale were intermixed. These cases required more extensive boundaries that were not focused on a single urban conurbation. For instance, commissioner Chapman reported that Stroud’s clothing mills were focused around a web of streams that spread across multiple parishes but which also contained large sections of ‘purely agricultural’ land. Despite this, he recommended an extensive boundary for the borough that took in all of Stroud’s mills, as he discovered that ‘parts of the families employed in agriculture generally find occupation in the manufactories and are thus interested in them’.⁵¹

The question of whether agricultural populations should be included in the new boroughs was also raised by eleven cases where the reform bill had stipulated extensive specific preliminary boundaries. When they commenced their work in September 1831, the commissioners were informed that they were only allowed to amend a preliminary boundary if it excluded part of the town associated with a borough. This meant the commissioners were initially obliged to abide by the excessively wide boundaries provided for Whitby, Sunderland, Huddersfield and Birmingham in the 15 September draft of the reform bill. In their initial report on Sunderland, Wrottesley and Tancred informed Drummond that had their instructions not required them to do so, ‘we cannot affirm that we should have been disposed to recommend so … extensive an incorporation of rural districts’.⁵² Drummond became particularly wary of the extensive preliminary limits provided for Whitby, Huddersfield and Birmingham. Each boundary, he discovered, had been created on the basis of local representations to the government after the introduction of their reform bill. While it transpired that the local requests from Birmingham discussed above had been the result of ignorance over the remit of the boundary commission, the preliminary definitions of both Huddersfield and Whitby were found to have been the product of political scheming by local parties already in the full throes of electioneering.⁵³ The discovery that politics had influenced the definition of these preliminary boundaries made it all the more apparent to Drummond that boundaries needed to be based on the ‘particular application of general principles’, which disregarded local opinion and were applied equally to all cases.⁵⁴

Following the receipt of their report on Whitby, Drummond informed Tancred and Wrottesley that the borough was ‘one of those cases which I should like [to] bring forward [to the government] as an example of the unfitness of the Schedule [C & D] boundaries … defining the boundaries of [certain] towns by townships – or parishes’.⁵⁵ The reform bill had stipulated that the townships of Whitby, Ruswarp and Hawsker should constitute the borough of Whitby (Map 7.2). Despite this, the commissioners discovered that the ‘wealthy’, but ‘declining’ sea-port town of Whitby only extended partly into Ruswarp and Hawsker, was unlikely to expand much further and the outlying houses in these townships were ‘far removed’ from the town of Whitby and ‘entirely agricultural’.⁵⁶ Although they were not formally allowed to do so, the commissioners proposed a tentative boundary for Whitby that was in keeping with their proposals elsewhere. This boundary cut off the outlying parts of Ruswarp and Hawsker and was met with approval by Drummond, who agreed that it included all of the ‘small portions of Ruswarp and Hawsker [that] could contribute essentially to the constituency of the town’.⁵⁷

Drummond presented the case of Whitby to the cabinet, which accepted his rationale and gave him permission to submit a supplementary set of instructions to the commissioners. In late October 1831 he advised the commissioners that if they had:

reason to believe that the description given in the schedule [of a borough] either does not embrace what is truly connected, by similarity of interest with the town or district, or that it includes portions of an opposite character, or … that it is not consistent with the intentions of the framers of the late bill, then it would be desirable to … propose for the consideration of government what you consider an improved boundary.⁵⁸

In addition to Whitby, this instruction led to the proposal of contracted boundaries for Sunderland, Huddersfield, Oldham, Stoke-on-Trent, Sheffield, Birmingham, Tower Hamlets, Finsbury, Marylebone and Lambeth (Maps 7.1 and 7.2). As a demonstration of what the commissioners, and Drummond, understood as the ‘intentions of the framers of the late bill’, their reports for these boroughs recommended the exclusion of ‘rural’ or ‘agricultural’ portions of land that were unconnected with the immediate populations associated with these boroughs, and not deemed likely to see future development.⁵⁹

Political interference on the sitting committee

Following the October amendment to their instructions, Drummond ensured that the commissioners identified consistent boundary proposals for all forty-one new boroughs. Later in the month, the sitting committee of the boundary commission (Drummond, Littleton and Beaufort) commenced a review of these proposals, which concluded in the publication of the boundary bill in February 1832. Throughout, channels of communication were kept open with the cabinet, with Russell acting as the primary conduit. The sitting committee approved thirty-nine of the commissioners’ recommendations but overturned their proposals for Birmingham and Whitby. In both cases, Littleton and Russell, respectively, secured alterations that they perceived to be favourable to their electoral interests.

Birmingham (Map 7.1) had been provided with extensive preliminary limits by the 15 September version of the reform bill, but following Drummond’s October instruction, an alternative boundary was proposed that separated ‘the town [of Birmingham] from the rural districts’ of Edgbaston and Bordesley (the parishes of which had been included in the borough’s preliminary description).⁶⁰ Beaufort, Littleton and Russell approved this aspect of the proposal. Littleton termed it ‘desirable’, Beaufort stated that ‘to include the whole of them [the parishes of Bordesley and Edgbaston] seems contrary to the spirit of the bill’, and Russell observed ‘I confess my own inclination points … to excluding the … rural districts mentioned in the report’.⁶¹

Birmingham’s proposal was complicated by the presence of the Boulton and Watt steam engine manufactory to the north of the town, in the Soho area of the parish of Aston. Although it appeared to form an extension of Birmingham, the commissioners had not proposed to include Soho in their boundary as it was in Staffordshire. The rest of Birmingham was in Warwickshire. This rationale baffled Beaufort and Russell, as it was well known that the Boulton and Watt manufactory formed an integral part of Birmingham’s identity. Beaufort asserted that, ‘Soho, which is intimately connected with the town, and which stands at the head of its great establishments, should surely be a constituent part of the borough’ and Russell stated that he was for ‘taking in Soho’.⁶² Littleton dissented on the basis that Soho was in Staffordshire and that he had ‘reason to think Messers Boulton and Watt would not desire the junction’.⁶³ Although Littleton claimed to ‘have no private wish about excluding Soho’, as MP for Staffordshire he had a longstanding electoral connection with Soho, as well as a personal connection with Matthew Boulton.⁶⁴ Furthermore, as discussed in the previous two chapters, Littleton had privately expressed a preference for ensuring that some manufacturing populations (excluding borough freeholders) remained in the midland counties.⁶⁵ The issue of Soho’s inclusion in Birmingham had a backstory, as the parish of Aston had been included in the preliminary boundary of Birmingham identified by the March 1831 draft of the reform bill. By April 1831, however, Aston had been removed from Birmingham’s preliminary boundaries, probably at the behest of Littleton who, as discussed above, influenced the preliminary boundaries of the Staffordshire boroughs of Wolverhampton and Walsall.⁶⁶

Due to the disagreement, Russell proposed that Drummond should decide whether to include Soho in the borough and advised him to ‘send a surveyor down [to Birmingham] next week to fix any [boundary] points’. This visit did not take place, as Littleton, sufficiently alarmed that Drummond would take in Soho, contacted his constituent, long-term correspondent and manager of the Soho foundry, Matthew Boulton. Littleton informed Boulton: it is desired by some parties … to include Soho within the boundary [of Birmingham]. What is your wish about it? It shall be as you like’.⁶⁷ Boulton advised Littleton of his preference that Soho remain in Staffordshire but asked him if he should consult Soho’s inhabitants over the matter and defer to their wishes. Littleton, seeking to avoid public pressure for Soho to form part of Birmingham, informed Boulton that it was ‘better not to consult your parishioners’.⁶⁸ Littleton then used his correspondence from Boulton to plead with Russell that Soho should not form part of Birmingham, to which Russell acceded, ‘your letter respecting Soho is quite satisfactory, so be it’.⁶⁹ With Soho’s manufacturers to be excluded from Birmingham, the commissioners’, Beaufort, Russell and Littleton’s earlier expressed desire that they should ‘draw such a line [around Birmingham] to generally comprehend the manufacturers and exclude the farmers [of Bordesley and Edgbaston]’ now appeared highly contradictory. Thus, to avoid questions in parliament over why the rural parts of Bordesley and Edgbaston, as well as the Soho manufactory, had been excluded, the boundary bill recommended no alteration to the specific preliminary boundaries for Birmingham identified by the 15 September version of the reform bill.

That something suspicious had taken place in the proposal of Birmingham’s boundary did not fail to escape Croker. When discussing the boundary bill in the Commons in June 1832, he exclaimed his disbelief that ‘the father of the arts in Birmingham, the great manufacturer, the man who had done more for the industry and trade of that great town than almost any individual that ever lived – Matthew Boulton, was excluded from a vote for Birmingham’. This observation was shamelessly rebuffed by Littleton on the basis that it had been deemed too difficult to draw a boundary that included the Soho area – even though Littleton had prevented Drummond from sending a surveyor there specifically for this purpose. Littleton then assured the Commons that Soho’s exclusion was not an issue, as he had consulted Boulton, who had consented to Soho remaining in Staffordshire.⁷⁰ Ultimately Littleton got his way. Croker’s complaints were discounted, and Soho was excluded from the boundaries of Birmingham as stipulated by the 1832 Boundary Act.

Two further cases prompted disagreement among the sitting committee: Whitby and Sunderland. Following Drummond’s October instruction, commissioners Wrottesley and Tancred had recommended an extensive exclusion of unconnected rural districts from the preliminary boundaries of both boroughs in order to bring their proposals in line with elsewhere (Map 7.2). Beaufort and Littleton approved of both proposals. On Sunderland they wrote:

We concur with the commissioners’ view of the fitter boundary – it includes all the kindred interests of the town and neighbourhood, and still leaves an ample margin [for future growth]. The very extensive district comprised with the description contained in the schedule to the late bill would have included an unnecessarily extensive portion of rural district.⁷¹

By contrast, Russell objected to both proposals. His attention was drawn to them in January 1832, when he was contacted by the prospective pro-reform candidate for Whitby, Richard Moorsom. Moorsom had heard a rumour that the commissioners planned to exclude the township of Hawsker from the borough, which he warned Russell, would be ‘a decided blow to the liberal interest here [in Whitby] and would … highly gratify the opposite party: men who are not only adverse to the present government on questions of reform, but who oppose them on every other’.⁷² Moorsom also informed Russell that the earl of Mulgrave, a Whig peer and local proprietor, agreed with him and would be contacting him over the matter. Following this, Russell conducted a review of the boundaries proposed for the new north-eastern boroughs and expressed his objection to the commissioners’ practice of reducing the specific preliminary boundaries of Sunderland and Whitby.

Russell highlighted several objections to the cases of Whitby and Sunderland that he had not made for other new boroughs whose specific preliminary boundaries had been modified in a similar manner. First, he stated that given that Whitby and Sunderland’s preliminary boundaries had been found to be legally correct, and had not been objected to by local inhabitants, there had been no need to amend them. Furthermore, he objected to the commissioners’ application of ‘general notions regarding town and country’ to divide the immediate populations associated with a borough from their surrounding rural populations. He observed:

With respect to the assumption that a rural parish is certainly unconnected with a shipping town it seems to me too easily adopted. The interest of the producers of corn, butter and cheese is that the great town in their neighbourhood should flourish and whatever tends to that end will be agreeable to them.

In the same note, Russell provided his seemingly contradictory approval to the commissioners’ proposal to exclude Huddersfield’s surrounding secondary rural population from its preliminary boundaries, and approved of excluding the agricultural districts surrounding Birmingham.

Russell insisted that Whitby and Sunderland’s boundaries be reviewed by Althorp and Grey.⁷³ Following this, Drummond wrote, ‘Lord John Russell has since expressed a decided opinion that the boundaries of Whitby and Sunderland given in the first [reform] bill should be adhered to’. Interestingly, Russell’s opinion was ignored in the case of Sunderland, as Beaufort and Littleton insisted on the commissioners’ proposed reduction of its preliminary boundaries.⁷⁴ In Whitby, however, the commissioners’ proposals were overruled in favour of the more extensive boundary favoured by Russell and Moorsom. Given that only Whitby was modified to allow for Russell’s wider conception of a shipping borough’s ‘connected population’, as well as his contradictory preference for a narrower conception of connected populations in other cases, it appears he used Sunderland as a stalking horse to ensure Whitby’s boundaries were amended to his liking. Once Whitby’s boundaries had been amended, he relented on altering Sunderland’s in order that they fell in line with the principles used to identify new borough boundaries elsewhere. Ironically, Russell’s attempts at gerrymandering were unsuccessful, as Moorsom failed to beat his Conservative opponent in Whitby’s first reformed election. Although Moorsom had completed a favourable canvass of Hawsker, he had failed to realise the township only contained five £10 householders.⁷⁵

The new boroughs and the boundary bill

The government amended a further seven of the commissioners’ new borough proposals following the boundary bill’s introduction to parliament – Finsbury, Marylebone, Tower Hamlets, Stoke-on-Trent, Sheffield, Oldham and Bradford. In each case the government reinstated a specific preliminary boundary that had been agreed to by the Commons prior to the commission commencing its work. By doing so, the government acknowledged (following complaints from petitioners or parliamentarians), that the commission had been too zealous in their attempts to segregate urban and rural areas. In every other case, however, the government defended the commissioners’ proposals on the basis that their application of Drummond’s principles had been proportionate. These changes demonstrated that when it suited them, the government, unlike Drummond, was willing to allow local opinion a limited role in the boundary-setting process. Given that for every government modification, a contradictory case remained, the changes to these seven boroughs are best considered a product of the realpolitik of negotiations over the boundary bill during February and July 1832, rather than a rejection of the commission’s general approach to boundary setting.

In their recommendation for the metropolitan borough of Marylebone, the commission had proposed to exclude the northern ‘rural district’ of the parish of St. Pancras, even though the entire parish had been included in the borough’s preliminary boundary.⁷⁶ Following a petition from the inhabitants of St. Pancras on 8 May 1832, which had asked that the entire parish be included in the borough, the government overturned the commissioners’ recommendation in the brief Commons committee stage that took place over the boundary bill on 25 May.⁷⁷ The reinstatement of the entire parish of St. Pancras into Marylebone was accompanied by the reinstatement of several rural parishes that the commission had proposed to exclude from the boroughs of Finsbury and Tower Hamlets, to ensure consistency between north London’s adjoining metropolitan boundaries.⁷⁸ As the government had been working behind the scenes at Westminster to identify changes that would allow the bill to be ‘committed proforma’⁷⁹ at the committee stage, it appears this decision was made to appease Middlesex’s radical MP, Joseph Hume, who had presented the petition from St. Pancras’s inhabitants.⁸⁰ The government’s consent to these amendments did not signal a complete reversal of their support for excluding rural districts from every metropolitan borough, as the boundary proposed by the same commissioners for Lambeth, which excluded the ‘purely agricultural’ parts of the parishes of Lambeth and Camberwell, remained intact.⁸¹ Significantly, the government had secured the support of Surrey’s two representatives for their plans to divide that county, which was probably predicated on including as many agricultural voters in the eastern division of the county as possible.⁸²

The commission’s recommendations for arbitrary boundaries that excluded the rural parts of townships from Stoke-on-Trent and Sheffield were also overturned. However, it is unclear why these changes took place as they were not debated in parliament, and no petitions were recorded against them. In both cases, the preliminary boundaries that had been approved by parliament prior to the commission commencing their work were reinstated. The most plausible explanation for the rejection of the commission’s proposals in these instances is that their arbitrary boundaries were too complex, and that the rural land excluded from both boroughs contained very few voters. Abiding by an existing legal boundary, in both cases, not only avoided the creation of a new boundary, but also had little material impact on either constituency.⁸³

The changes made to the commissioner’s recommendations for Bradford and Oldham provide the only instances where the government publicly acknowledged that the commission had made too narrow an assessment of a new borough’s connected population (the metropolitan boroughs had been amended without debate).⁸⁴ To the surprise of the parish officers of Chadderton, Crompton and Royton, whose successful June 1831 memorial for their inclusion in Oldham started this chapter, the boundary commission recommended their exclusion from Oldham’s boundaries. The commissioners had overturned this preliminary boundary on the basis that ‘everything which can … be considered as the town [of Oldham]’ was included in its township, and that the land in its surrounding townships was ‘without exception pasture, used for the keeping of cows’. Although the commissioners had acknowledged that the inhabitants of these townships were engaged in weaving, giving the population a ‘mixed character, which is peculiar and unusual’, they did not deem this sufficient for their inclusion.⁸⁵ Within days of this announcement, the inhabitants of Oldham and its surrounding townships submitted a cross-party memorial to parliament complaining of the ‘injustice’ of the latter’s exclusion from the borough.⁸⁶ The Lancashire MP, Benjamin Heywood, and the Preston MP, John Wood, presented the memorial in late May 1832, which was successful in overturning the commissioners’ recommendation. The cross-party nature of the memorial was clearly significant in affecting this change. However, reports of pro-reform activity in the township of Royton earlier that month were probably also influential in convincing the Grey ministry of the political benefits of an extended boundary.⁸⁷

Similarly, on 7 June, a fortnight after Oldham’s alteration, Bradford’s boundaries were extended to its entire parish, in order that it included its more extended connected population (it had been proposed to only include three of the parish of Bradford’s five townships in the borough). Significantly, the commissioners’ proposed boundary had excluded the parish of Manningham, the location of the seat of Ellis Cunliffe Lister, one of Bradford’s prominent mill-owners who had already announced his candidacy for the borough and had actively supported Morpeth and Brougham at the 1830 Yorkshire election.⁸⁸ The government had previously bowed to pressure from Morpeth to include Manningham in the borough’s preliminary boundary in August 1831, and did so again in June 1832.

The changes to both Bradford and Oldham appeared to confirm to the pro-reform Yorkshire MP, George Strickland, that by early June the government preferred wider boundaries in the new boroughs, which took in both a town’s immediate and secondary population. On this basis, he argued on 8 June for the extension of Halifax and Huddersfield’s boundaries into their respective parishes. Following the introduction of the boundary bill, six petitions had been submitted to parliament from Halifax’s surrounding townships, whose ‘interests’ Strickland confirmed were ‘closely identified with those of Halifax’.⁸⁹ A petition had also been sent from Huddersfield, requesting that its parish, not its township, become its parliamentary boundary.⁹⁰ Strickland reasoned that Huddersfield and Halifax’s boundaries should be extended on the same basis as Bradford and Oldham’s. In Huddersfield, doing so also promised to reduce the power of the Whig proprietor and Yorkshire MP, John Charles Ramsden, who by the commissioners’ own admission owned ‘every house but one’ within their proposed boundary.⁹¹

By contrast to Oldham and Bradford, Russell informed Strickland, and the petitioners from both towns, that the commissioners had come ‘to a proper decision’ over both boroughs.⁹² In doing so, Russell reaffirmed his agreement with the commission’s application of its principles, which acknowledged that parliamentary boundaries could not be designed to mitigate the ‘natural influence’ of property.⁹³ The cases of Huddersfield and Halifax were taken up by the anti-reform first Baron Wynford when the boundary bill reached the Lords in July 1832. However, the government refused to change either boundary, as the Duke of Richmond (who stewarded the boundary bill through the Lords) maintained his support for the commission’s application of its principles to both boroughs.⁹⁴ As Strickland and Wynford found, and the case of the metropolitan boroughs suggests, the government’s decision to overrule the commissioners’ recommendations in some cases, but maintain them in others, defied simple explanation. It is likely that the government reasoned that giving in to Strickland and Wynford over Halifax and Huddersfield would have taken their concessionary stance too far, and simply encouraged further objections to the commissioners’ proposals.

Electoral and political legacy

The identification of preliminary boundaries, Littleton and Russell’s interventions on the sitting committee and parliamentary negotiations meant the new boroughs were the most contradictory class of boundaries enacted by the 1832 Boundary Act. After clarifying their ability to overturn the preliminary boundary schedules in the reform bill, the commission eventually proposed new borough boundaries according to Drummond’s ‘scientific’ framework that included the immediate – but in most cases non-agricultural – populations associated with a borough and allowed space for its future growth. Nine of these forty-one proposals were modified in order that a more extensive space (which the commissioners had deemed too rural) was included in a borough’s limits. Whitby and Birmingham, and probably Bradford, were modified by the government for overtly partisan ends. The remaining changes were made to appease certain parliamentarians and their conceptions of the interested populations associated with a borough. The government’s deviation from Drummond’s principles in these cases revealed they were not as attached as the commission had supposed to the exclusion of rural districts from the new boroughs, particularly if adding areas to a boundary aided parliamentary negotiations. This severely muddies Moore’s claim that the government’s primary intention in the new boroughs was to create ‘deference communities’ via the isolation of urban and rural electorates.⁹⁵ Furthermore, while the commissioners had clearly sought to achieve a separation of urban and rural populations with their proposals, they were not operating at the somewhat abstract level of ‘deference community’ creation as Moore has suggested. Rather they were combining their understanding of the government’s public legitimisation for the new boroughs – to provide representation to particular manufacturing or commercial interests – with the legal, economic and social considerations that they had been using to redraw ancient borough boundaries in an apparently disinterested manner – by defining the entire community associated with a borough and allowing space for its future growth.

Of all the constituency types in England’s reformed electoral landscape, the new boroughs proved the most supportive of Whig-Liberal governments and radical political issues between 1832 and 1868. New borough MPs delivered consistent majorities in favour of Whig and Liberal administrations, unless those administrations were seen to be acting in too moderate a manner, and offered continuous support to liberal economic, religious and political reforms. At the 1832 election, the party labels of fifty-five of the sixty-three new borough MPs suggested they were willing to support a Whig government (Graph C.1 and Table C.3), and of those fifty-five MPs, thirty-three (60 per cent) stood in advance of the Grey ministry as either radicals or reformers.⁹⁶ In England’s existing boroughs the equivalent figure was 43 per cent and in England’s counties it was 35 per cent.⁹⁷ Their radical leanings meant new borough MPs were the only type of English constituency to oppose the government’s proposed church rates compromise in April 1834. While the new boroughs never reached the same heights of radicalism again, at least 73 per cent of their seats were filled by Liberal MPs for the rest of the period. This was reflected in major confidence divisions between 1835 and 1868, where between 70 and 80 per cent of MPs representing new boroughs supported Whig or Liberal administrations (or oppositions) over the Conservative alternative. The only times these levels of support shifted were in the major confidence votes with high levels of radical dissent during the 1850s.

The radical bias of new borough MPs was confirmed by their consistent support for free trade, the abolition of church rates and the ballot, in comparison to their English counterparts representing existing boroughs and counties (Graphs C.3, C.5 and C.7 and Tables C.5, C.7 and C.9). As Tories and protectionists had feared throughout the 1820s, the new boroughs proved a breeding ground for the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary movement for the repeal of the corn laws. A minimum of 75 per cent of new borough MPs supported corn law reform from 1832. By contrast, until 1846, support for the same issue in the English counties remained below 10 per cent, hovered around the 20 per cent mark for English boroughs extended to their surrounding parishes and remained around 40 per cent for every other ancient borough. It was a similar story in terms of support for the abolition of church rates and the ballot. The Whig government’s compromise solution on church rates in 1834 led to the first major radical rebellion of the post-reform period, and by the 1850s around nine in ten new borough MPs supported their total abolition. Support for the ballot grew quickly among new borough MPs during the 1830s, when it became an electorally profitable means of signalling to radical constituents that they stood in advance of the Whig government and supported further electoral reform. This meant that at least seven in ten new borough MPs supported secret voting from the 1840s, compared to one in ten county MPs, two in ten MPs representing multiple parish boroughs and five in ten MPs representing every other ancient borough.

It would be rash to suggest that the boundaries provided to the new boroughs in 1832 were the primary reason for the Liberal and radical bias of the new boroughs. To an extent the commission’s preference for excluding rural and agricultural districts from new borough boundaries proved favourable to Liberal and radical interests, although due to a lack of polling data this can only be deduced with any specificity in the handful of cases that were given extended boundaries against the commission’s wishes. In Birmingham (whose parliamentary boundaries were adopted at a municipal level in 1838) the rural parishes of Edgbaston and Bordesley, which had been included in the boundary to deflect from Soho’s exclusion to the north of the town, provided a clear power base for the local Conservative party – although their electoral success was limited and party identity in the borough was severely complicated by the enduring popularity of currency reform.⁹⁸ In Oldham two of the three townships that the commissioners had originally deemed too agricultural for inclusion in the borough (Chadderton and Crompton), and whose lobbying efforts for inclusion in the borough started this chapter, became a significant electoral base for local Conservatives after 1832, ensuring the return of their candidates at two elections and a by-election prior to 1868.⁹⁹ These experiences were consistent with the new borough of Leeds, where the commissioners agreed to retain parliament’s wide preliminary definition of the borough in the expectation of urban expansion and to avoid the creation of arbitrary boundaries. The suburban areas in the borough’s outskirts provided the foundation for the election of one Conservative member at six of nine general elections during the period – a power base that was gradually complicated by an influx of ‘villa liberals’ to the suburbs of Leeds prior to the Second Reform Act.¹⁰⁰

The agricultural outskirts of new boroughs were not always advantageous to local Conservatives, however. The extension of Bradford into Manningham, which the commission had recommended against, benefitted the Whig manufacturer, Lister, who secured one of the borough’s two seats for the next decade.¹⁰¹ Likewise, the wider boundaries for London’s northern metropolitan boroughs held little advantage for Conservative candidates, and the inclusion of Hackney in Tower Hamlets actually provided a significant electoral base from the 1850s for the locally born advanced Liberal MP Charles Butler.¹⁰² Stoke and Sheffield’s wider boundaries had little direct electoral impact either, due to the small number of voters these rural areas contributed to the constituency.¹⁰³ The latter two cases in particular suggest that even if wider boundaries had been proposed by the commission, the limited number of voters that might have been added to new borough boundaries would have had a limited impact on electoral outcomes.

A more fertile means of understanding the significance of the boundaries assigned to the new boroughs in 1832 is to consider their impact alongside the other major structural conditions that defined reformed constituency politics – the elite £10 franchise and the need to create complex systems of party organisation to oversee annual registration. When doing so, it becomes apparent that the fixed, generally urban, industrial electoral geographies defined by the 1832 Boundary Act created the ideal conditions in which the representation of commercial and manufacturing interests, and the politics of liberalism, flourished. Significantly, a lack of ancient franchise rights in the new boroughs meant that voters could only be enfranchised if they owned or rented property within its boundaries, focusing the organisation of electoral politics entirely on the electoral interest communities defined by the 1832 Boundary Act.¹⁰⁴ This created the ideal conditions for a type of constituency politics to flourish between 1832 and 1868, which in line with the findings of Taylor, led to the consistent return of MPs with close affiliations to the socio-economic interests of their localities.¹⁰⁵

As reformers such as Russell had hoped prior to 1832, this meant that most new boroughs became associated with discernible interest groups in parliament. The largest group was the northern textile-interest boroughs, which if Manchester and Leeds are included in this categorisation, totalled fifteen constituencies.¹⁰⁶ They were followed by the shipping interest boroughs of the north-east (Sunderland, South Shields, Tynemouth and Whitby), the midland iron interest boroughs (Birmingham, Walsall and Wolverhampton) and the naval interest boroughs in the south (Devonport, Chatham and to a certain extent Greenwich). Sheffield was probably the only borough representing the steel – or cutlery – interest, Gateshead and Dudley fell broadly under the coal interests and Stoke-on-Trent under the pottery interest. The southern textile interest gained representation from Stroud and to a lesser degree, Frome. In addition, there were the metropolitan boroughs (Finsbury, Lambeth, Marylebone, Tower Hamlets and also Greenwich) whose interest representation was diffused among the variety of enterprises and varied socio-economic concerns of London.¹⁰⁷ By contrast, there was a small group of new boroughs – Brighton, Wakefield, Cheltenham, Whitehaven, Kidderminster and Kendal – whose dominant social and economic identities proved less clear. Brighton, in particular, saw its political identity transformed by the railways, as an influx of London commuters and middle and working-class holiday makers ended the borough’s initial reputation during the 1830s as a pocket of royal influence and winter destination for London’s elite.¹⁰⁸

The success of the Whig interest representation model occurred because the organisation of politics in the new boroughs was generally overseen by the leading manufacturing and commercial figures, and sometimes landed elites, within a borough’s boundaries, usually with the co-operation of local chapels and churches. In this respect, the electoral reforms of 1832 overtly politicised the economic and social interests within new borough limits, as their leading textile and metal manufacturers, ship-owners, mine-owners and potters, with the support of religious ministers, local bankers, lawyers and merchants, assumed responsibility for the leadership, funding and oversight of emerging local party machines.

In Macclesfield, John Brocklehurst, a Unitarian who owned the town’s, and Britain’s, largest silk manufactory enjoyed sufficient political influence in his local party hierarchy to be returned as a moderate Liberal for one of the borough’s seats at every election between 1832 and 1868.¹⁰⁹ A complex network of ‘small masters working in their own workshops’ in Sheffield successfully co-operated with the town’s Dissenting radical-Liberals to maintain electoral hegemony over a Conservative alliance among the town’s financial and banking sectors, as well as its Anglicans and Wesleyan Methodists.¹¹⁰ And in Rochdale, the ‘Liberal Nonconformist manufacturing elite’ were able to ‘wield influence through party organisation’ despite the proliferation of smaller textile manufacturers, a lack of £10 householders with direct connections to manufacturing and the borough’s thriving radical culture.¹¹¹ The commercial elite that tended to sit at the top of these local party hierarchies were not necessarily Liberal, and in Blackburn, three of the town’s five major cotton-spinning families provided the focal point for Conservatism in the borough, and were generally able to return at least one member throughout the period.¹¹² While they formed a minority of new boroughs, the influence of a Tory commercial elite combined with a strong Anglican vote to usually allow one Conservative to be returned for the double-member seats of Bolton, Oldham, Stoke, Sunderland and Macclesfield.¹¹³

It was not just a borough’s economic and social elites whose politicisation was hastened by the electoral conditions established by the 1832 Boundary and Reform Acts. Living within a boundary legitimised the political participation of electors and non-electors, who found creative, if not always successful, means of engaging in electoral politics and challenging local party authority. Voters in the new boroughs, whose politicisation via the new registration system in 1832 has been convincingly documented by historians, were generally able to demonstrate their independence from local party machinery when its leaders acted against public opinion.¹¹⁴ And, while the elite nature of the franchise, especially in the north, meant most working-class constituents, and all women, could not vote, it did not stop the unenfranchised within a borough’s boundaries exhibiting some influence over electoral outcomes. As O’Gorman and Vernon have observed, the eliteness of the £10 franchise was significant in ensuring the adoption of canvassing, hustings and election day rituals in the new boroughs that had predominated in the unreformed borough system prior to 1832, in order that the voices of the unenfranchised could be heard by those who were voting on their behalf.¹¹⁵ These electoral customs were not just window-dressing, they had real influence on electoral outcomes, and helped to ensure that politics in the new boroughs reflected the unique interests and political tensions of their electoral geographies. During the 1850s, for instance, Stroud, Bury and Dudley all witnessed coalitions between non-electors and independent electors that led to the defeat of incumbent MPs with the backing of established local party organisations.¹¹⁶ While the political influence of non-electors, in particular, should not be overstated, inclusion in a borough’s electoral geography had an enduring impact on the communities enfranchised in 1832. The implementation of boundary reform had an equally marked impact on England’s counties. Its political outcomes, however, proved very different.

Notes

1. 1. PP1831 (64) (112), xvi. 64–5; E. Butterworth, Historical Sketches of Oldham (Oldham, 1856), 197; PP1830–31 (0.37), ii. 28–31; PP1831 (22), iii. 32.

2. 2. See Chapter 1.

3. 3. D. C. Moore, The Politics of Deference: A Study of the Mid-Nineteenth Century Political System (New York, 1976), 176–77.

4. 4. See Chapter 1. See also, Miles Taylor, ‘Interests, Parties and the State: The Urban Electorate in England, c. 1820–72’, in J. Lawrence and Miles Taylor (eds.), Party, State and Society: Electoral Behaviour in Britain since 1820 (Aldershot, 1997), 50–78; A. Hawkins, Victorian Political Culture: Habits of Heart and Mind (Oxford, 2015), 162–3.

5. 5. PP1831 (244), iii. 37–41.

6. 6. ‘Manchester and Salford’, ‘Birmingham and Aston’, ‘Greenwich, Deptford and Woolwich’, ‘Wolverhampton, Bilston, and Sedgeley’, ‘Sunderland and the Wearmouths’, ‘South Shields and Westoe’, ‘Whitehaven, Workington, Harrington’, and ‘Tynemouth and North Shields’, Morning Post, 2 Mar. 1831; Hansard, 3, ii. (1 Mar. 1831), 1072.

7. 7. DSC, Grey, GRE/B46/1/27, ‘Reform Committee … Dec. 11 & 14 1830’, 1–2; DSC, Grey, GRE/B46/1/35, ‘List of the Great Towns’, 1; PP1830–31 (201), x. 5.

8. 8. P. Salmon, ‘Littleton, Edward John (1791–1863)’, in D. Fisher (ed.), The House of Commons, 1820–1832 (Cambridge, 2009), vi. 136.

9. 9. PP1822 (502), xv, 84. 305.

10. 10. PP1830–31 (247), ii. 16–18.

11. 11. Newcastle Chronicle, 8 Jan. 1831, 4; M. Escott, ‘Durham County’, in Fisher, Commons, ii. 359; PP1831 (64) (112), xvi. 7–8.

12. 12. PP1830–31 (247), ii. 16–18.

13. 13. PP1830–31 (247), ii. 16–18; PP1831 (244), iii. 37–41; PP1831–2 (11), iii. 42.

14. 14. HCJ, 86 (5 Aug. 1831), 731.

15. 15. PP1830–31 (0.37), ii. 28–31; Hansard, 13, iii. (30 Mar. 1831), 1171.

16. 16. PP1830–31 (247), ii. 17; PP1830–31 (0.37), ii. 30; Hansard, 3, v. (5 Aug. 1831), 838–9.

17. 17. Hansard, 3, v. (5 Aug. 1831), 839.

18. 18. HCJ, 86 (5 Aug. 1831), 731, (15 Sept. 1831), 845.

19. 19. PP1822 (502), xv. 156–7.

20. 20. PP1830–31 (247), ii. 16; PP1822 (502), xv. 195–9; PP1831–2 (141), xxxviii. 8.

21. 21. Hansard, 3, iii. (18 Apr. 1831), 1519.

22. 22. PP1831 (64) (112), xvi. 9.

23. 23. K. Rix, ‘Bury’, and ‘Whitehaven’, in P. Salmon and K. Rix (eds.), The House of Commons 1832–1868 (forthcoming).

24. 24. K. Rix, ‘Oldham’, and ‘Rochdale’, in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868; PP1831 (64) (112), xvi. 35, 49, 65.

25. 25. PP1831 (64) (112), xvi. 35–40, 49–62, 64, 70; Hansard, 3, v. (6 Aug. 1831), 893–902, vi. (24 Aug. 1831), 536; HCJ, 86 (5 Aug. 1831), 731, (15 Sept. 1831), 845.

26. 26. Hansard, 3, v. (4 Aug. 1831), 746–51; TNA, T72/8/20, ‘Birmingham’; TNA, T72/8/52, ‘Cheltenham’; TNA, T72/11/51, ‘Walsall’; PP1830–31 (247), ii. 17; PP1830–31 (0.37), ii. 30; PP1831 (22), iii. 33.

27. 27. Birmingham Journal, 19 Mar. 1831. See also Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, 7, 14 Mar. 1831

28. 28. Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, 15 Aug. 1831; HCJ, 86 (2 Aug. 1831), 720; PP1830–31 (0.37), ii. 28–31.

29. 29. TNA, T72/11/60, ‘Whitby’, R. Moorsom to Russell, 3 Jan. 1832.

30. 30. Hansard, 3, v. (5 Aug. 1831), 833–6.

31. 31. Compiled from PP1831–2 (141), xxxviii–xli.

32. 32. The existing boroughs of Liverpool, Derby, Southampton and Cambridge had seen similar increases.

33. 33. PP1831–2 (141), xli. 183.

34. 34. Railroads had also featured in predicting future growth in the existing boroughs of Poole, Hereford, Sandwich and Morpeth, PP1831–2 (141), xxxviii. 231; xxxix. 15, 143; xl. 169.

35. 35. D. Pickles, ‘The Bowling Tramways’, Unspecified diss. held by Bradford Industrial Museum (1966).

36. 36. PP1831–2 (141), xxxviii. 172.

37. 37. TNA, T72/9/19, ‘Gateshead’, Report on Gateshead by John Wrottesley, 6 Oct. 1831.

38. 38. PP1831–2 (141), xxxviii. 99.

39. 39. TNA, T72/9/18, ‘Frome’, Gawler and Ansley to Drummond, 16 Oct. 1831.

40. 40. TNA, T72/11/53, ‘Warrington’, ‘Report on Warrington’; S. Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary of England, iv. (London, 1831), 393.

41. 41. TNA, T72/8/26, ‘Bolton’, Romilly to Drummond, 28 Oct. 1831.

42. 42. TNA, T72/11/8, ‘Rochdale’, Drummond to Allen, 7 Nov. 1831.

43. 43. TNA, T72/11/47, ‘Tynemouth’, Report on Tynemouth by Wrottesley, 9 Oct. 1831.

44. 44. TNA, T72/11/53, ‘Warrington’, Drummond to Romilly, 21 Sept. 1831; TNA, T72/8/24, ‘Blackburn’, ‘Observations on Blackburn’, 7 Nov. 1831.

45. 45. PP1831–2 (141), xli. 209.

46. 46. TNA, T72/11/49, ‘Wakefield’, Wrottesley to Drummond, 27 Sept. 1831.

47. 47. TNA, T72/11/49, ‘Report on the borough of Wakefield’.

48. 48. TNA, T72/11/49, ‘Report on the borough of Wakefield’, Drummond to Wrottesley, undated.

49. 49. TNA, T72/11/62, ‘Whitehaven’, Report on Whitehaven by Romilly, 1 Oct. 1831; TNA, T72/9/47, ‘Kidderminster’; TNA, T72/9/45, ‘Kendal’; TNA, T72/9/18, ‘Frome’.

50. 50. PP1831–2 (141), xxxviii. 55, 165, xxxix. 53, 143, xli. 185.

51. 51. PP1831–2 (141), xxxviii. 198.

52. 52. TNA, T72/11/35, ‘Sunderland’, Report on Sunderland by Wrottesley and Tancred, 5 Oct. 1831.

53. 53. TNA, T72/10/56, ‘Oldham’, Chapman to Drummond, 3 Nov. 1831; TNA, T72/8/20, ‘Birmingham’, Ord to Drummond, 28 Sept. 1831; TNA, T72/9/39 ‘Huddersfield’, Romilly to Drummond, 19 Oct. 1831; TNA, T72/11/60 ‘Whitby’, Wrottesley to Drummond, 24 Oct. 1831.

54. 54. TNA, T72/11/47, ‘Tynemouth’, Wrottesley to Drummond, 22 Nov. 1831; TNA, T72/9/39, ‘Huddersfield’, Romilly to Drummond, 19 Oct. 1831.

55. 55. TNA, T72/11/60, ‘Whitby’, Drummond to Wrottesley, 15 Oct. 1831.

56. 56. TNA, T72/11/60, ‘Report on Whitby’.

57. 57. TNA, T72/11/60, ‘Report on Whitby’, Drummond to Wrottesley, 15 Oct. 1831.

58. 58. PP1831–2 (141), xxxviii. 13.

59. 59. See individual reports in PP1831–2 (141), xxxviii–xli.

60. 60. TNA, T72/8/20, ‘Birmingham’, Ord to Drummond, 28 Sept. 1831.

61. 61. TNA, T72/8/20, ‘Birmingham’, undated note by Littleton, undated note by Beaufort, Russell and Littleton.

62. 62. TNA, T72/8/20, ‘Birmingham’, undated note by Beaufort, Russell and Littleton.

63. 63. TNA, T72/8/20, ‘Birmingham’, undated note by Littleton.

64. 64. See Library of Birmingham, Boulton Papers [hereafter LB, Boulton], MS3782/13/22/1.

65. 65. SRO, Hatherton, D260/M/F/5/26/7, 31 Oct. 1831, 195.

66. 66. DSC, Grey, B46/1/35, 1, ‘Appendix No. 3’; PP1830–31 (247), ii. 16–18.

67. 67. LB, Boulton, MS3782/13/22/14, Littleton to Boulton, 30 Dec. 1831, 138.

68. 68. LB, Boulton, MS3782/13/22/14, Littleton to Boulton, 6 Jan. 1831, 139.

69. 69. SRO, Hatherton, D260.M.F.5.27.7, Russell to Littleton, 3 Jan. 1832, 3.

70. 70. Hansard, 3, xiii. (7 June 1832), 535; MOP, iii. (7 June 1832), 2514–15.

71. 71. TNA, T72/11/60, ‘Whitby’, note by Littleton and Beaufort.

72. 72. TNA, T72/11/60, ‘Whitby’, R. Moorsom to Russell, 3 Jan. 1832; K. Rix, ‘Whitby’, in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868.

73. 73. TNA, T72/11/60, ‘Whitby’, ‘Sunderland and Whitby’, note by Russell.

74. 74. TNA, T72/11/60, ‘Whitby’, ‘Sunderland and Whitby’, note by Littleton and Beaufort.

75. 75. TNA, T72/11/60, ‘Whitby’, ‘Report on Whitby’.

76. 76. PP1831–2 (141), xxxix. 118.

77. 77. Morning Post, 9 May 1832, 2; HCJ, 87 (8 May 1832), 300.

78. 78. PP1831–2 (488), iii. 53.

79. 79. SRO, Hatherton, D260/M/F/5/26/8, 24 May 1832, 47.

80. 80. PP1831–2 (141), xxxix. 108–30; D. Fisher, ‘Hume, Joseph’, in Fisher, Commons, v. 752–83.

81. 81. PP1831–2 (141), xxxix. 125; 2 Gul. IV c.64 (11 July 1832).

82. 82. MOP, iii. (7 June 1832), 2519, (22 June 1832), 2733.

83. 83. PP1831–2 (141), xl. 7–9, xli. 205–07; PP1831–2 (174), iii. 47, 57; (488), iii. 71; HCJ, 87 (22 June 1832), 427.

84. 84. Both boroughs were granted a second seat in the December 1831 expansion of Schedule C, but qualified to do so based on the population contained in the initial, smaller, boundaries proposed by the commission. See also, P. Salmon, ‘English Reform Legislation, 1831–32’, in Fisher, Commons, i. 385–8.

85. 85. PP1831–2 (141), xxxix. 68.

86. 86. Manchester Times, 3 Mar. 1832; Manchester Courier, 3 Mar. 1832; Butterworth, Oldham, 198–9.

87. 87. K. Rix, ‘Oldham’, in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868; PP1831–2 (488), iii. 51; Manchester Courier, 12 May 1832; Manchester Times, 12, 26 May 1832.

88. 88. Leeds Mercury, 8 Oct. 1831; Leeds Intelligencer, 24 Mar. 1831, 24 May 1832; J. James, The History and Topography of Bradford (London, 1841), 170; S. Lees, ‘Lister, Ellis Cunliffe’, and K. Rix, ‘Bradford’, in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868.

89. 89. MOP, iii. (8 June 1832), 2533; HCJ, 87 (5 June 1832), 375.

90. 90. HCJ, 87 (28 Feb. 1832), 153.

91. 91. PP1831–2 (141), xli. 188; S. Richardson, ‘Independence and Deference: A Study of the West Riding Electorate’ (unpublished University of Leeds PhD thesis, 1995), 4.

92. 92. MOP, iii. (8 June 1832), 2533.

93. 93. TNA, T72/11/60, ‘Whitby’, ‘Sunderland and Whitby’ by Russell; TNA, T72/8/52, ‘Cheltenham’, Drummond to Chapman, 14 Sept. 1831.

94. 94. MOP, iii. (3 July 1832), 2933–4, (4 July 1832), 2969; HCJ, 87 (14 June 1832), 398; HLJ, 64 (4 July 1832), 353.

95. 95. Moore, Politics of Deference, 176–7.

96. 96. Only Irish boroughs were more radical, with twenty-one of thirty-nine MPs standing in advance of the Whig government.

97. 97. The figure in multiple parish boroughs was 37 per cent. For unchanged boroughs or those extended into their town it was 44 per cent.

98. 98. Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, 12 July 1841; Birmingham Journal, 7 May 1859; H. Miller, ‘Birmingham’, in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868; H. Miller, ‘Radicals, Tories or Monomaniacs? The Birmingham Currency Reformers in the House of Commons, 1832–67’, Parliamentary History, 31, 3 (2012), 354–77; D. Cannadine, ‘The Calthorpe Family and Birmingham, 1810–1910: A “Conservative Interest” Examined’, HJ, 18, 4 (1975), 737–8.

99. 99. Manchester Times, 10 July 1852; The Oldham Poll Book (Oldham, 1852); J. Dodge, The Poll Book (Oldham, 1835); The Remembrancer, Shewing how the electors of the borough of Oldham voted (Oldham, 1847); K. Rix, ‘Oldham’, in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868.

100. 100. Leeds Mercury, 2 June 1859; M. Roberts, ‘ “Villa Toryism” and Popular Conservatism in Leeds, 1885–1902’, HJ, 49, 1 (2006), 221–2; D. Fraser, Urban Politics in Victorian England: The Structure of Politics in Victorian Cities (Leicester, 1976), 215–7.

101. 101. D. G. Wright, ‘A Radical Borough: Parliamentary Politics in Bradford 1832–41’, Northern History, 4, 1 (1969), 132–66.

102. 102. M. Spychal, ‘Butler, Charles Salisbury (1812–1870)’, in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868.

103. 103. Sheffield Independent, 4 April 1857.

104. 104. In existing boroughs, ancient rights voters had to live within seven miles of the borough’s main polling place, P. Salmon, Electoral Reform at Work: Local Politics and National Parties, 1832–1841 (Woodbridge, 2002), 254–5.

105. 105. Taylor, ‘Interests, Parties and the State’, 50–78.

106. 106. Ashton-under-Lyne, Blackburn, Bolton, Bradford, Bury, Halifax, Huddersfield, Leeds, Macclesfield, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport and Warrington.

107. 107. B. Weinstein, Liberalism and Local Government in Early Victorian London (Woodbridge, 2011), 43.

108. 108. P. Salmon, ‘Brighton’, in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868.

109. 109. K. Rix, ‘Macclesfield’, in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868.

110. 110. S. Richardson, ‘Independence and Deference’, 136–55.

111. 111. K. Rix, ‘Rochdale’, in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868; J. R. Vincent ‘The Electoral Sociology of Rochdale’, Economic History Review, 16, 1 (1963), 76–90.

112. 112. K. Rix, ‘Blackburn’, in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868.

113. 113. K. Rix, ‘Blackburn’, ‘Bolton’, ‘Oldham’, and ‘Macclesfield’, H. Miller, ‘Stoke-on-Trent’, and J. Owen, ‘Sunderland’, in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868; Hawkins, Victorian Political Culture, 183–6, 188–94.

114. 114. Salmon, Electoral Reform.

115. 115. F. O’Gorman, ‘Campaign Rituals and Ceremonies: The Social Meaning of Elections in England 1780–1860’, Past and Present, 135 (1992)’, 79–115; J. Vernon, Politics and the People: A Study in English Political Culture, 1815–1867 (Cambridge, 1993), 163–82.

116. 116. K. Rix, ‘Bury’, in Salmon and Rix, Commons 1832–1868. On Dudley see G. Clark, The Curiosities of Dudley and the Black Country (Birmingham, 1881), 208; Birmingham Daily Post, 9 Mar. 1858, 28 Jan. 1863; Birmingham Daily Gazette, 22 Jan. 1864, 1 Feb. 1865. On Stroud see, Sheffield Independent, 8, 27 Jan. 1844; Bristol Times, 24 Apr. 1852; Derby Mercury, 25 Nov. 1863; Stroud Journal, 14 Mar. 1868; Stroud News, 12 Jan. 1877.