Democracy in Devon: exhibition at the Devon Heritage Centre

Welcome to the second of our guest blogs, which coincides with an exhibition running at the Devon Heritage Centre. Organised by Dr. David Thackeray, of the University of Exeter, the exhibition demonstrates the vitality of popular participation in nineteenth century elections.

Democracy in Devon, by David Thackeray

An exhibition currently being staged at the Devon Heritage Centre gives an insight into the changing culture of electoral politics in the county over the last 200 years. The world of Victorian elections is brought to life through the use of posters, leaflets and poll books. In this largely rural county, at least, the old traditions of the unreformed period proved surprisingly durable after 1832.

Castle Yard, Exeter at the 1820 election

In this satirical print produced in 1820, the corruption of the county’s electoral politics is vividly presented, with voters depicted as little more than slaves to the interests of the church and leading landowners. Devon was an unwieldy constituency, covering 398 parishes, with over 7,000 voters, before it was split into northern and southern divisions in 1832. At the centre of this scene from 1820 is the ‘polling shop’, Exeter’s Castle Yard, where a reluctant electorate is being marched to the poll. Ironically, Exeter Castle was also an important symbolic venue for reformers. As the seat of the county’s Quarter Sessions it provided a venue where the public could voice complaints about the conduct of magistrates.

How much changed in the county after the reforms of 1832? Certainly elections remained the preserve of an elite, with less than three percent of Devon residents holding the parliamentary vote during the 1832-67 period. Political posters from the time, such as this ‘Shakespere Illustrated’ series (below) from the Exeter election of 1868, which depicts local political figures as characters in the great playwright’s most famous works, assumed that the electorate was well-educated and closely engaged with the local contest.

Election poster from Exeter, 1868

Moreover, candidates continued to rely heavily on volunteer activists, often members of the clergy or local landowners. The Church’s influence remained strong, particularly around the cathedral city of Exeter. The surprisingly large number of poll books which survive in the papers of local notables in the Devon Heritage Centre’s collections indicate the ongoing concerns that political leaders had with maintaining the power of traditional ‘influences’ in election contests.

The public ritual of the hustings continued to be vital to the culture of elections after the 1832 Reform Act, providing an opportunity for participation (albeit of often transient influence) by the vast majority of the electorate who remained unenfranchised. Plymouth hosted packed hustings meetings in the newly formed constituency of South Devon. The nominations in the constituency drew audiences estimated at 10,000 by some sources. In a largely rural region elections were times for communal entertainment and spectacle. The ceremonial chairing of candidates was so popular that in 1818 all three candidates were carried above the crowd to the poll. This tradition lived on in South Devon where at a by-election in 1849 the victorious MP, Sir Ralph Lopes, engaged in a triumphal procession in full military uniform on horseback. This painting (below) of a torchlight procession past Exeter’s Guildhall in 1880 gives some sense of the drama and excitement of election night during the Victorian era, where women and children are prominent amongst the throng of onlookers.

Exeter Guildhall, election night 1880

While election petitions remained rare in Devon after 1868, with the exceptions of Plymouth in 1880 (where the election result was declared void), and unsuccessful petitions at Barnstaple (1874) and Exeter (1910), accusations of low-level corruption and ‘treating’ by candidates remained a persistent theme in the county’s electioneering into the early twentieth century. One leaflet, attributed to the wife of the Liberal candidate for Mid-Devon in January 1910, even claimed that the Conservatives relied ‘largely on beer and gifts to win voters’. Exploring the visual world of politics, which is often well documented in the holdings of local records centres, can provide us with valuable and often surprising insights into the public culture of Victorian elections.

David Thackeray is a Lecturer at the University of Exeter, where he teaches a Special Subject on Electoral Politics in Modern Britain. The exhibition runs through May at the Devon Heritage Centre, Exeter and was put together with the support of Charlotte Anderson, Olivia Cottrell, Rosie George, Matt Kelsall, Anjali Mukhi and Anna Wilkinson.

Further reading

• Jon Lawrence, Electing Our Masters: the hustings in British politics from Hogarth to Blair (2009)
• Frank O’Gorman, ‘Campaign rituals and ceremonies: the social meanings of elections in England, 1780-1860’, Past and Present, 135 (1992), 79-115
• James Vernon, Politics and the people: a study in English political culture, c.1815-1867 (1993)
• History of Parliament articles from the 1820-32 volumes on elections in Devon and Exeter.

The People’s Charter and the Victorian Commons

On 8 May 1838 the People’s Charter was first published. To celebrate its 175^th anniversary, we consider the initial response of Victorian MPs to the Charter and the ways in which the History of Parliament’s House of Commons 1832-68 project sheds further light on the role that Chartists played in Victorian parliamentary elections.

On 8 May 1838 the ‘petition for universal suffrage’, which had been drawn up following a series of consultations between the London Working Men’s Association and six MPs, was published as the ‘People’s Charter’. The famous Six Points – manhood suffrage, equal electoral districts, vote by ballot, annual parliaments, payment of MPs and abolition of the property qualification – were actually submerged within an extensive manifesto, totalling twenty-two pages, which called for a complete reform of the machinery of elections established by the 1832 Reform Act. In fact, so submerged were the Six Points that when the Charter was republished in 1842 and 1845, they had to be printed in bold type.

The People’s Charter was supported by a small but vocal group of Victorian MPs led by Thomas Duncombe, Radical Member for Finsbury, whose failure in June 1836 to persuade the Commons to enfranchise compound householders (£10 householders whose rates were paid by their landlords) had influenced the formation of the London Working Men’s Association, and the publication of their 1836 pamphlet The Rotten House of Commons. The first national petition for the Charter, which contained 1,280,958 signatures, was presented to the Commons by Thomas Attwood, Radical MP for Birmingham, on 14 June 1839, and the following month, Attwood, after a generally restrained and sober speech, moved for a committee on it. The motion was seconded by John Fielden, MP for Oldham, and backed by other Radicals including Joseph Hume and Robert Wallace, but it was vociferously opposed by Lord John Russell, the leader of the Whigs in the Commons, who argued that the Charter did not represent ‘the sentiments and opinions of the people at large’. Attwood’s motion was defeated by a crushing margin of 235 votes to 46.

Although viewed largely as an extra-parliamentary protest movement, Chartism played an important role in many parliamentary elections in the mid-Victorian era. Chartists were particularly active at the hustings, when the nomination of parliamentary candidates was followed by a show of hands to show support for those standing, an important election ritual that allowed for the participation of non-electors. Our research for the 1832-1868 constituency articles has underlined the effectiveness of Chartist interventions at the hustings, particularly in areas of England that have been neglected by traditional studies of the movement. For example, Carlisle Chartists were a vociferous force at the 1841 general election when their leader, the handloom weaver Joseph Broom Hanson, was proposed and seconded at the nomination, and overwhelmingly won the show of hands before withdrawing due to ‘want of money’, as he could not afford to pay the returning officer’s fees. Despite Hanson’s withdrawal, the Chartist intervention had been effective as the Liberal candidates had repeatedly been put on the defensive over their support for the new Poor Law, an issue which the Chartists zealously opposed.

Thereafter Hanson and his supporters continued to swamp public meetings of parliamentary candidates across Cumberland with Chartist resolutions. Similar incidents were witnessed in the north-east of England, where Chartist candidates for Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Sunderland made significant interventions. Although they also subsequently retired to avoid the expense of going to the poll, their presence resulted in a far greater scrutiny of other candidates’ positions on critical issues such as the Poor Law and the suppression of Chartist disturbances.

The borough of Nottingham, which was home to a strong tradition of radical protest, witnessed significant Chartist activity at the polls. Most famously, Feargus O’Connor, the national Chartist leader, was returned for the constituency at the 1847 general election, a result which The Times claimed was ‘as surprising an occurrence as could possibly arise from the mere movements of human opinion and feeling’. Yet, as our study of Nottingham makes clear, The Times should not have been so shocked. At the 1841 Nottingham by-election, the return of John Walter, the owner of The Times, had been largely secured thanks to a local Tory-Chartist alliance based on a shared opposition to the Poor Law. Even after the decline of the national movement, Nottingham Chartists remained active, and at the 1857 and 1859 general elections they brought forward the barrister, poet and novelist Ernest Jones, though on both occasions he received only a paltry share of the vote.

The publication of the People’s Charter ushered in an era of significant Chartist activity at parliamentary elections, a phenomenon that we are continuing to address in our constituency studies and our biographies of MPs who were sympathetic to the Chartist cause. Our draft articles on Thomas Attwood, and the Carlisle, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Sunderland and Nottingham constituencies are available on our preview site. For details of how to access this, see here.

Further reading:

M. Chase, Chartism: a New History (2007)

M. Chase, ‘“Labour’s candidates”: Chartist Challenges at the Parliamentary Polls, 1839-1860’, Labour History Review, 74:1 (2009), 64-89.

M. Taylor, ‘The Six Points: Chartism and the Reform of Parliament’, in O. Ashton, R. Fyson and S. Roberts, The Chartist Legacy (1999), 1-23.

What Not To Wear: The Mover and Seconder of the Address

With the state opening of Parliament just days away, it is worth recalling a ritual connected with the government’s address in reply to the Queen’s speech which for many years was a regular source of entertainment. The address followed the speech from the throne, which outlined government plans, and the Members who moved and seconded it were expected to provide its ‘echo and key’. Those selected to undertake the task were usually novice MPs ‘just good enough not absolutely to break down’, as the Saturday Review put it, ‘but not good enough to be insulted by the offer’. It provided an opportunity for Members who were not habitual speakers to make a successful debut before a full House. When the House opened, therefore, everything resembled an ordinary debate except that seated behind the Prime Minister would be ‘two stiff, pale figures, in gay colours, looking the pictures of abject and ghastly misery’.

The choice of speakers presented ministries with an opportunity to foster party unity. The mover was usually a county Member, often a young aristocrat, while the seconder was a borough Member, usually a merchant or manufacturer. For example, the first address of the reformed parliament in 1833 was moved by the Earl of Ormelie, MP for Perthshire, and seconded by John Marshall, the son of an industrialist and junior MP for Leeds. Prior to composing their speeches the candidates could only expect to be coached by the junior whip in ‘such fragmentary revelations of the Ministerial mind as it may please the great men to drop from the Cabinet table’.

While the 1833 address was immediately denounced by Daniel O’Connell as ‘bloody, brutal, and unconstitutional’, in the mid-1830s the opposition began to refrain from moving hostile amendments to the address, and it was generally understood that these speeches were not fair subjects for criticism. They were usually indulgently received both by the House and the press, although exceptions were made. In 1837 the experienced Scottish advocate William Gibson Craig, MP for Midlothian, was judged by The Times to have been an ‘unparalleled failure’, his disgrace heightened both by his ‘ostentatious display of written preparation’ and the ‘gaiety of his court dress’.

Thomas Bazley (in more usual garb)

Craig’s flamboyant appearance was determined by a rule of the House which ordered the mover and seconder to appear in court dress, uniform, or whatever official garb they were, according to the press, ‘more or less remotely… privileged to don’. Those lucky enough to belong to a rifle corps or regiment of militia might rest easy, while Members who were deputy lieutenants could in their ‘hideous combination of silver and red’ at least pass muster as military men. One such was Thomas Bazley, a ‘gigantic’ cotton-spinner who sat for Manchester, whose ‘half-moon cocked hat surmounted with a bunch of white feathers’ made a ‘very grand’ addition to his 6ft. 4in. frame. Less fortunate was Joseph Firth Bottomley Firth, a Huddersfield manufacturer and Radical MP for Chelsea. A description of his ordeal in 1882 was reproduced by his local newspaper which gleefully recounted that no one could have

‘looked more miserable or guilty than did Mr. Firth when, on Tuesday night, he slunk up the floor of the House in Court dress. The knowledge that his trousers did not descend below his knees was as plainly stamped upon his blushing brow as if it had been engraved by a ticket-writer; and nothing could have been more pathetic than the manner in which, having reached his place, and finding himself seated directly under the Ladies’ Gallery, he opened his copy of the Orders to their widest limits, and spread them over his knee’.

There was much speculation about the uniform worn by his better-attired colleague Edward Marjoribanks, MP for Berwickshire, before it was identified as that of the Royal Scottish Archers. The heavy epaulettes and tight-fitting tail coat did not, however, seem ‘especially suited for archery practice’, which led MPs to conclude that Scottish archery differed ‘as widely from Robin Hood’s style as does Scotch law from that practiced at Westminster’.

The speakers, if not embarrassed by their ill-fitting garments, were often condemned to deliver unexciting speeches devoted to ‘hypothetical praise of possible measures’ which they had not helped draw up and had never seen. Their orations often descended into a ‘string of platitudes’ so that after the House had sufficiently examined their attire, its ‘pity was exhausted, and ennui began to take its place’. By 1897 the address was regarded as a formality that might ‘with advantage’ be abolished. However, in true British style, tradition continued to co-exist with innovation and in 1936 the first woman to second the address, Florence Horsburgh, MP for Dundee, sought to establish a precedent by opting for ‘a black evening gown and white gloves’.

While in more recent times the dress code has been relaxed, the MPs nominated for this duty on 8 May might wish to reflect on the sartorial trials undergone by some of their predecessors.

By-elections in British politics, 1832-1914

Published this month, By-elections in British politics, 1832-1914 (edited by T.G. Otte and Paul Readman) includes contributions from our editor, Philip Salmon, and our assistant editor, Kathryn Rix.

Philip’s chapter on ‘Plumping Contests’ is about the different electoral process that operated in by-elections and its impact on Victorian voting behaviour. Most English voters were able to vote for two MPs at general elections during the 19th century. Sharing votes between parties (‘splitting’) was extremely common – in the 1835 and 1857 general elections almost one-fifth of all English voters cast votes for candidates from different parties (See Gary Cox, The Efficient Secret (1987), 103).

Split voters (*) in an 1837 pollbook

These non-partisan ‘splitters’, in particular, faced really difficult choices when only one MP was to be elected in a by-election. Using the evidence of over a quarter of a million voter choices, as recorded in 160 surviving pollbooks across the period, Philip shows how by-elections forced these ‘splitters’ to make party choices that were then kept up in subsequent general elections. Instead of returning to ‘splitting’ at the next general election, most former ‘splitters’ repeated the party choice they had ‘plumped’ for in the by-election, and now used both their votes to support just one party. Put simply, by-elections helped to turn ‘splitters’ into partisans.

A number of historians have charted the rise of voter partisanship in Victorian elections, most notably Gary Cox, the late John Phillips, and Edwin Jaggard. Building on their work, Philip shows how by-elections, with their use of a single vote, were a crucial component in this process of electoral politicisation.

Kathryn’s chapter, on ‘By-elections and the modernisation of party organisation, 1867-1914’, considers the ways in which by-elections became the focus of intensive activity by the rival Liberal and Conservative party organisations, particularly in the decades after the Third Reform Act of 1884-5. Vast resources were poured into these contests: at the 1905 North Dorset by-election, 132 Liberal meetings were held, addressed by 83 different speakers. This effort reflected the significance which the parties placed upon by-elections, devoting considerable attention to what William Gladstone described as ‘political meteorology’ – that is, trying to predict the outcome of the next general election on the basis of by-election results. Not all politicians, however, especially among the Conservative party, were convinced by the forecasting powers of by-elections: one leading Conservative described them as being ‘rather like a weather glass, that is not always right, and not infrequently wrong’.

Yet as this chapter argues, for the local, regional and central party activists who served in the Liberal and Conservative party organisations, by-elections offered something more than an opportunity to predict future electoral outcomes. They gave the growing numbers of professional party agents the chance to demonstrate their utility and expand their influence. Organisers from other constituencies routinely went to assist elsewhere with by-election campaigning, which provided an invaluable means of spreading the benefits of modern electioneering techniques across the constituencies. Their presence was not always welcomed – one local activist in Peckham in 1908 described them as ‘sharks’ – reflecting the ongoing tensions between the different elements of the party organisation at local, regional and national level. Despite this, Kathryn’s chapter concludes that the development of a cohesive network of professional party organisers was a central factor in shaping the major changes which took place in by-election campaigning during this period.

Further Reading:

Gary Cox, The Efficient Secret (1987)

John A. Phillips, The Great Reform Bill in the Boroughs (1992)

The Scottish dimension (2)

Following on from the first blog in this series in January, this post focuses on the distinctive nature of the Scottish representative system before and after the 1832 Scottish Reform Act. Both the franchise (who had the right to vote) and the nature of constituencies (which geographical areas were represented) differed significantly from England and Wales, and Ireland.

As in England and Ireland the Scottish electoral system drew a distinction between urban and rural areas, or burghs and counties. Before 1832, there had been 45 Scottish MPs who represented 30 counties and 15 burghs. All constituencies were single member, unlike in England and Wales where double-member seats predominated. Apart from Edinburgh, all the burghs were actually groupings of royal burghs, sometimes geographically diffuse. These burgh districts, as they were known, had no equivalent in England or Ireland and were a legacy of the 1707 Act of Union. Unlike Ireland and England and Wales, there was no property qualification for MPs who represented Scottish constituencies.

The burgh franchise was vested in the corporations. In burgh districts before 1832 each constituent burgh corporation possessed one vote. An election result in a district containing five burghs might, for example, be 3-2.  Importantly, this meant that before 1832 there was no popular electoral franchise in urban Scotland. There was no equivalent to English freemen or scot and lot boroughs with relatively large popular electorates. As a result the Scottish urban electorate was tiny. The skulduggery that went on behind the scenes, both within and between corporations was memorably satirised by John Galt in his novel The Provost (1822). Before 1832 the small size of the Scottish county electorate and the creation of fictitious votes served to facilitate the control of the county representation by the great landowners.

The limitations of the Scottish electoral system made it relatively easy for successive Tory governments to manage, notably through Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, Pitt the Younger’s Scottish adjutant. Research undertaken for the House of Commons, 1820-1832 project has revealed that Scottish MPs were much more likely to support the government and oppose reform than their Irish or English counterparts.

The 1832 Scottish Reform Act increased the number of Scottish MPs to 53, representing 51 constituencies. All were single member apart from Edinburgh and Glasgow which returned two MPs each. Dundee, Aberdeen, Greenock, Paisley and Perth were given separate representation for the first time. There remained 14 burgh districts (although some of these were reconstituted) and 30 counties. The Act established a £10 household franchise in the burghs and gave the vote to various categories of owners, tenants, life-renters and leaseholders in the counties. As married women were allowed to retain property in their own name in Scotland (unlike in England before 1870), husbands could qualify to vote through their wife’s property after 1832. However, these voters accounted for just 1.4% of the total urban electorate in 1844.

Norman Gash observed in 1953 that the 1832 Scottish Reform Act was ‘far more revolutionary’ than its English counterpart because of the restricted and oligarchic nature of the unreformed Scottish system. ‘The Act was not so much reform as enfranchisement’. The electorate rose from a nominal 5,000 to 65,000, or by 1,400% as a result of the Act. By 1865 the Scottish electorate stood at 105,000. These were impressive increases, but most of the growth after 1832 was in the four largest cities: Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow. In some counties with small electorates the franchise was manipulated by the great landowners to create ‘faggot’ votes, creating paper properties given to tenants or dependents. The electorates of many constituent burghs within districts remained small. In the 1840s 13 out of the 69 burghs that comprised the 14 districts had less than 50 electors.

Despite these limitations, reform ushered in a new era in Scottish electoral politics, which has received remarkably little attention compared to England or Ireland. The role of religion, parties, issues and rituals in Scottish electoral culture will be addressed in subsequent blogs.

Further reading:

M. Dyer, Men of property and intelligence: the Scottish electoral system prior to 1884 (1996).

W. Ferguson, ‘The Reform Act (Scotland) of 1832 – intention and effect’, Scottish Historical Review, 45 (1966), 105-14.

D.R. Fisher, ‘Scotland’, in History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1820-1832, (2009), i. 97-146

J. Galt, The Provost (1822), chapters V, XLI, XLII

N. Gash, Politics in the age of Peel (1953), chapter 2.

G. Pentland, Radicalism, Reform and National Identity in Scotland, 1820-1833 (2008).

MP of the Month: Sir Robert Heron

Sir Robert Heron

For historians of the Victorian House of Commons, there is perhaps no richer source for throwing light on the political personalities of the day than the journals and diaries of nineteenth-century Members of Parliament. Although Sir Robert Heron, who sat for Grimsby from 1812 to 1818 and for Peterborough from 1819 to 1847, was described by a contemporary as ‘a somewhat obscure … Whig’, his eclectic Notes, first published in 1850, offer a fascinating insight into one backbencher’s views of not only some of the most prominent Victorian politicians, but also the culture of the Commons during the age of Reform.

Heron made little impact in the Commons, but this was absolutely his intention. In an age that witnessed a significant increase in the time that the Commons devoted to MPs’ speeches, Heron stood as an important reminder that some politicians still believed in the virtues of silence. He thought that the time of the reformed House was ‘eternally wasted in the most futile and idle manner’, and he was unimpressed by his fellow members, who were ‘almost all seized with the rage for speaking, and persevere in making all sorts of motions – many very absurd – to the interruption of the most important measures’. He thus largely refrained from speaking in debate, preferring to record his opinions in his diary, which would form the basis of his published Notes.

His diary entries make clear his vehement opposition to Conservative politicians. The Speaker of the House, Charles Manners Sutton, had ‘slender abilities’, while Sir Robert Peel was a man of ‘no talents’ who sought ‘neither to disguise his despotism, nor conciliate his supporters’. He had greater faith in Lord Melbourne as Prime Minister, praising his ‘temper and discretion’, but doubted the capabilities of Lord Althorp, Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1830 to 1834, who had ‘not sufficient talents or vigour for his situation’. He therefore had little faith in his political leaders, who in turn seemed to have taken little notice of him.

Heron published his Notes in 1850, three years after he had retired from public life. For contemporary readers looking for scurrilous observations on the political elite, there was plenty to satisfy, though Heron’s political commentary was unfortunately punctuated by rather prosaic observations on his ‘menagerie’ of exotic animals kept on his Stubton estate, near Grantham. John Wilson Croker, whom Heron had described as ‘one of the most determined jobbers’, savaged the work in the Quarterly Review, describing it as a ‘farrago of nonsense and libel’ written by a ‘crazy simpleton’. More wryly, the historian Thomas Macaulay merely hoped that Heron was ‘a better zoologist than politician’.

A fantastic resource for political historians (and perhaps anyone interested in exotic animals), the second edition (1851) of Heron’s Notes is available on Google Books. His lengthy parliamentary service means that biographies of him covering the different phases of his career can be found in the History of Parliament’s 1790-1820 volumes, its 1820-32 volumes and on our 1832-1868 preview site. For details of how to access the 1832-1868 preview site, click here.

MPs at the Old Bailey

The Victorian Commons would like to wish the Old Bailey Online a happy tenth anniversary! We’re joining fellow bloggers by contributing this post to this weekend’s celebratory blogging event. Our History of Parliament colleague, Ruth Paley, has also written a post which will be appearing here later this weekend.

The proceedings of the Old Bailey might not seem the most obvious research tool for parliamentary historians, but the Old Bailey Online has provided some fascinating insights into some of the 19th century MPs whose biographies we have researched.

We have blogged before about one unfortunate former MP who spent Christmas Day 1857 in Newgate prison and subsequently found himself in the dock at the Old Bailey. Elected MP for Beverley at the 1857 general election, Edward Auchmuty Glover (1815-1862) was unseated by an election petition later that year on the grounds that he did not possess the property qualification then required of MPs. The election petition was heard in the usual way by a committee of the House of Commons. However, Glover was then tried at the Old Bailey for having made a false declaration regarding his qualification, and in April 1858 was sentenced to four months in Newgate prison, although he swiftly secured a transfer to the Queen’s Bench prison. The Old Bailey proceedings shed valuable light on Glover’s financial circumstances and the complex arrangements he made to transfer property from his relatives in an attempt to obtain the necessary qualification. They also, rather more unexpectedly, provide useful details of Commons procedure with regard to the swearing in of new members: the second witness called in the case was Thomas Erskine May, the Clerk Assistant to the Commons, whose name will be familiar to many as the author of the standard handbook on parliamentary practice.

Glover was not the only MP whose name we have uncovered as a defendant at the Old Bailey. William Roupell (1831-1909), Liberal MP for Lambeth, 1857-62, was sentenced to life imprisonment in September 1862 for forging his father’s will. Reported to have been a model prisoner, he was released in 1876, and spent the rest of his life living in suburban Surrey, where he was a keen gardener.

In another intriguing case in the Old Bailey’s records, an MP appears not as a defendant, but as a witness. In October 1846 Edward Davis Protheroe (1798-1852), one of the sitting Liberal MPs for Halifax, brought a case against his former valet, James Newbery, who had tried to blackmail Protheroe by accusing him of ‘an unnatural offence’, threatening to inform his parents of his alleged homosexuality and to expose him at his clubs. Protheroe robustly denied Newbery’s claims ‘respecting different acts of familiarity and indecency having taken place between them’. Newbery was found guilty and sentenced to be transported for 20 years. While this case was reported in the press, the ability to search the Old Bailey Online also turned up evidence of further claims regarding Protheroe’s alleged homosexuality in an otherwise unrelated extortion case in 1850.

The free availability and the ease of searching the Old Bailey Online has been a valuable resource in researching the biographies of these particularly colourful MPs, making a refreshing change from our customary fare in Hansard and the Parliamentary Papers. As we continue our work on the 2,589 MPs elected to Parliament between 1832 and 1868, we look forward to having further opportunities to make use of it.