Voting in Louth

Voting in the first half of the nineteenth century was not by secret ballot and was always property-related. Accordingly any surviving records of voting, or even entitlement to vote, can be helpful in establishing personal identity and property that can be linked to the names in the rating lists. However this information is only fragmentary and its limitations need to be understood. In particular there is no information about those not registered to vote, either because they were not qualified or because they did not seek registration.

Parliamentary Elections

Voting in parliamentary elections was recorded in poll books, published commercially and often incorporating long extracts from the speeches made at the time of the election. As Louth was not a parliamentary borough, voting was for the county MPs. Votes could only be recorded if there was a contested election, which did not always happen, particularly because of the very high costs incurred by the candidates. The contested election for Lincolnshire in 1807 was the first contest since 1724; and the general elections in 1826, 1830, 1837, and 1847 produced no contests affecting Louth.¹1. R J Olney Lincolnshire Politics 1832 – 1885 (1973) pp 92–3, 100, 122. The poll books are available on family history websites. As there were two seats to be filled, the electors had two votes, but some of them (“plumpers”) used only one vote.

Voting for County MPs before 1832

Before the Reform Act 1832 the normal qualification for voting for the “knights of the shires” was ownership of freehold land with an annual value of £2. This qualification of “forty shilling freeholders” had been fixed in the Middle Ages, when monetary values were much higher. A labourer who owned his own house might be able to vote, and a small number did. However voting was confined to those paying land tax. This tax had been fixed in the 1690s, and subsequent changes in land ownership meant that some owners did not pay and so were not qualified to vote. Also, the only place where votes could be cast was Lincoln, a strong deterrent to voting for people that lived in Louth.

1818 (General Election) and 1823 (By-election)

Poll books listed the voters with their occupations. The lists were organised by the ancient districts of the county, mainly called wapentakes and hundreds,²2. The town/parish of Louth was within Louth-eske Wapentake (often less correctly referred to as Louth-eske Hundred) within each of which voters were listed by the parishes in which they lived; if different, the parish where the qualifying land was situated was also specified.

Voting for County MPs from 1832

The Reform Act 1832 preserved the voting rights of the forty shilling freeholders but abolished the land tax requirement. It extended the franchise to tenants of properties with annual rents of at least £50 and certain other tenants with long leases. In addition Lincolnshire was divided for parliamentary election purposes into Lindsey and Kesteven/Holland and polling was held at a number of places, including Louth. (But the polling place depended on the land giving the qualification, not on the place of residence. For example, Samuel Blakelock (381217), a saddler, was not entitled to vote in Louth, because the rent he paid for his house, shop, stable and paddock was less than £50 pa. He owned freehold property in Binbrook, but the polling place for Binbrook was Market Rasen; so he had to go there to vote.) Potential voters had to complete a form to claim the right to vote and pay a fee of one shilling.³3. Reform Act 1832 Sch H, form 1. The claim was made to the overseers of the poor; they were elected annually in every parish. The practical effect of the act was to increase the number of voters but to leave without votes the great majority of ratepayers.

For more than 20 years after the Reform Act 1832 there was only limited competition for Lindsey’s two parliamentary seats. In addition to being rich, candidates were expected to be, or be closely related to, prominent Lincolnshire landowners; and no candidate who did not support the agricultural interest (especially the corn laws, which imposed an import duty on wheat) had any chance of success. It was often considered sensible to share the seats. Thus in the 1837 general election Lord Worsley (Whig) and R A Christopher (Tory) were returned unopposed. In the next general election the Tories tried to capture both seats and organised canvassing took place. In Louth “the usual bustle of a Midsummer market-day’s business was suddenly arrested at 11 o’clock by the clangour of two bands of music and a cavalcade of horsemen and pedestrians, with flags of various colours bearing opposite inscriptions” which marked the arrival of Worsley and the second Tory candidate, C H Cust. (Mercury 2.7.1841; its editorial slant had become Whig/Liberal). The report went on to describe the warm reception given to Worsley and the despondency of Cust’s agents. Naturally the Tory paper, Chronicle, made a different report: “In the Radical town of Louth we have … more promises than we could have expected.” In the event Worsley topped the poll and Christopher was also re-elected but Cust failed.

1832 (General Election)

This poll book grouped voters by their polling places and parishes where the qualifying land was situated. Where they lived elsewhere, the parish of residence was given. In addition the list gave their occupations and (in an abbreviated form) their qualifications for voting.

Non-voters were not listed in the poll book. However for electors qualifying in respect of land in Louth there has survived a separate document, the parish list drawn up by the Louth overseers of the poor pursuant to the Reform Act 1832 to show who was entitled to vote. It provides information not included in the poll book in that the location of the qualifying land is specified. Details are included in the Databases section of this website.

The extra information is often of limited use, because it was sufficient merely to show qualification; for example the entry for Stephen Gray referred only to his house in Upgate and not to his numerous other properties. Louth residents owning land elsewhere in Lindsey might appear listed in other parishes.

1835 (General Election)

This poll book reproduced in an abbreviated form the overseers’ lists of those entitled to vote with the addition of voting details. For example, Anthony Sharpley, farmer, was listed as a freeholder not voting; he had died between the compilation of the list and the poll.

1841 (General Election) and 1852 (General Election)

These poll books listed voters, showing their qualifications and occupations and with separate lists of registered voters that did not vote. For the non-voters occupations were omitted.

The Vestry Poll 1834

The Vestry was a parish meeting of ratepayers with various local government functions. For example, the valuations reflected in the three rating lists were pursuant to resolutions of the Louth Vestry. Normally Vestry meetings were of a routine character and attended by only a minority of the ratepayers, but in 1834 there arose a fierce controversy about the levying of a 4d rate for the maintenance of the fabric of the parish church. This led to demands for a formal poll at which votes would be recorded and the qualifications of voters checked. The resulting poll was held on 3, 4 and 6 October 1834 and a printed list of voters published subsequently. This is included in the Databases section of this website. The subject was dealt with at tedious length in a book⁴4. The Law Practice and Principles of Church Rates … (Louth 1834; digitised by Google). evidently written by Richard Paddison. Some details of the debates leading up to the poll are given in Robinson and Sturman 2001 pp 73 – 4.

The number of persons listed as ratepayers in 1834 is not known but was probably about 1,500. However a significant minority (perhaps in the vicinity of 5%) were disqualified by receipt of poor relief; and others may have been disqualified by failure to pay their poor rates.⁵5. In his book (p 132) Paddison set out his views on the complicated legal position on disqualifications. The voting list recorded that 1,082 individuals voted and gave their names, usually their occupations and the rateable values of the property they occupied. For the great majority of ratepayers, who occupied property rated at less than £50, the rule was one man (or woman), one vote; but the occupiers of greater property had increased votes, up to a maximum of six. The result of the poll may be summarised as follows:

The value of the 1834 list is that it helps the identification of (a) women whose forenames were not given in the rating lists, (b) persons of insufficient importance to be mentioned in the directories and (c) persons with duplicate names (for example there were three Thomas Smiths and five William Smiths).

The voting list gives a good general picture of the range of occupations in Louth and the combination of occupations and rateable values sometimes enables employers to be distinguished from employees. To take as an example two butchers: Jonathan Robinson paid rates on property valued at £24.5 and must have been the proprietor of a substantial business, whereas John Robinson paid rates on property valued at only £2 and looks like an employee. The largest group of employees (146) were labourers, but the list did not distinguish between agricultural labourers and the general labourers employed in a wide range of trades and manufacturing processes. The enumerators’ books for the 1841 census indicate that agricultural labourers were about one third of the total. (However, this estimate may itself be influenced by the foibles of the 14 enumerators: one recorded 33 agricultural labourers and no general labourers; another recorded 58 general labourers and no agricultural labourers.)

The values were the half values of R1823 and so need to be at least doubled to arrive at true values. This probably affected the result: for example, Miss Ansell cast two votes in favour of the rate; if her house and land had been properly valued, she would have been entitled to at least four votes; and others were in the same position.

There was a distinct gender imbalance in the voting in that women were more likely to vote in favour of the rate, as shown by the voter numbers below.

Another church rate poll took place in 1842, by which time the higher values in R1838 would have given some of the wealthier ratepayers increased voting power; the result supported the church rate. The printed record of this poll would doubtless provide a useful list of ratepayers but I have not found any copy. (Goulding recorded the existence of List of Voters on the Question of a Church Rate at Louth taken June 2, 3 and 4 1842; Louth: William Edwards, 8vo, 24 pages; but the Goulding Collection contains his typescript list of books, which indicates that he did not own a copy.)

The Burgess Rolls

Under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835 annual lists were drawn up of the “burgesses” entitled to vote. For this entitlement see the Corporations page. The burgess rolls for 1840 (part only), 1844, 1846 and 1860 have survived. For the modern reader the burgess rolls are much less useful than the 1834 poll, because women were not included and the rolls did not give occupations or particulars of the property occupied, other than the street where the occupier lived. As a sample, the roll for 1844, the earliest covering the whole town, is included in the Databases section.