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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
Mid-nineteenth century elections in England's small towns were vividly described in contemporary fiction. For example, Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers included the Eatanswill contest in which a bucolic exuberance among voters rendered irrelevant the political differences between candidates Slumkey and Fizkin. Who could blame the enfranchised mob for their behavior during polling when “Excisable articles were remarkably cheap at all the public houses,” producing an epidemic of dizziness “under which they [the voters] might frequently be seen lying on the pavements in a state of utter insensibility.” Following his bitter experience in unsuccessfully contesting Beverley in East Yorkshire, one of the Eatanswills of the sixties, Anthony Trollope parodied the election in Ralph the Heir when he took his readers to Percycross, where the Conservative Sir Thomas Underwood managed to edge out Ontario Moggs, the radical bootmaker. Similarly, at Trollope's Silverbridge (in The Prime Minister), the levers of the “Castle” interest had long been pulled by the ironmonger Sprugeon and the cork sole maker Sprout, issues and principles apparently being of peripheral importance.
Earlier drafts of this paper were presented to the Celtic Studies Conference, Sydney, December 1995, and the Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies, Los Angeles, March 1996. I am grateful to participants for their comments and for the valuable advice given by Richard Davis and John Phillips.
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14 At every general election between 1832 and 1880 Launceston returned a Conservative and Richmond a Liberal, usually without a contest.
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28 Vyvyan “managed” the borough in this way until he retired in 1857.
29 Somerset Record Office, DD/HY/24/23, Election Notebook 1859, part 1 (hereafter, S.R.O.).
30 Results were: 1837 Cantelupe (C) 160, Buller (L) 125; 1841 Vyvyan (C) 159, Vigors (L) 133; 1859 Rogers (C) 158, Trueman (L) 126.
31 For an informative account of the Assistant Boundary Commissioners' visit to Helston on 26 October 1867, see Royal Cornwall Gazette, 3 October 1867, p. 6Google Scholar. Three antagonistic factions argued among themselves throughout the proceedings.
32 Alliance House, London, 13th Report of the Executive Committee of the United Kingdom Alliance 1864-65.
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37 Bodleian Library, Oxford, Sir Phillip Rose's Election Notebook, 1859.
38 C.R.O., RR 5545, Thomas Robins to William Rashleigh, 10 October 1842.
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40 British Library, Add. Mss. 40409, for 93-94, J. W. Freshfield to Sir Robert Peel, 3 January 1835; Gash, , Politics, p. 337Google Scholar. See also Royal Cornwall Gazette, 11 June 1841, p. 2Google Scholar.
41 Between 1832 and 1865 Penryn & Falmouth's electorate ranged between 800 and 900 hundred voters. Support for the two parties' leading candidate could vary by as much as 160 votes in consecutive elections, suggesting a large number of swing voters.
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48 This was William Pole Carew, the former Conservative member for East Cornwall 1845-1852. Carew, the sitting Conservative, was defeated in 1852 by Nicholas Kendall, who ran as a Protectionist and promised not to supplant Carew. The latter unsuccessfully contested Liskeard in 1859.
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51 C.R.O., R.5545, Edward Geach to William Rashleigh, 11 February 1843.
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54 Royal Institution of Cornwall, Hawkins MSS, HH/13/76, William Roberts Jr. to Thomas Hawkins, 30 March 1761.
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56 S.R.O., DD/HY/24/23, Election Notebook 1859, part 1.
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59 Ibid., ch. 6.
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61 Further information on this may be found in Phillips, The Great Reform Bill, ch. 8.
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