A history of voting reform - by Susan Brownrigg

On Thursday July 4th, the U.K will go to the polls to vote in the General Election. Eligible voters will select from a list of candidates who they would like to represent them as their member of parliament - MP for their area (constituency.)

To vote you must

• be registered to vote
• be 18 or over on the day of the election (‘polling day’)
• be a British, Irish or qualifying Commonwealth citizen
• be resident at an address in the UK or living abroad and registered as an overseas voter
• not be legally excluded from voting

You can vote in person, or register to vote by post.

In the past very few people had the right to vote. 200 years ago, all women and most men without property were illegible, meaning only approximately 2.7% of the population had the right to vote!

In the 1708, after the Acts of Union which united the parliaments of England and Scotland, the General Election took place between April 30th and July 7th - as different constituencies (areas) voted at different times back then, rather than on one day.

Today there are 650 constituencies with each appointing one MP. 200 years ago seats in the House of Commons were not split so equally!

The Industrial Revolution had brought great change, towns boomed with a huge increase in population and yet, big towns like Birmingham and Manchester did not have an MP, so the people had no representation. Yet Cornwall which had a similar population to Manchester had 42 seats in the House of Commons!

Some places were called 'rotten boroughs' because they had such a small electorate (people allowed to vote) and yet they had an unrepresentative influence.

Old Sarum in Wiltshire was an uninhabited hill but still elected two MPs.

Demand for reform grew, with riots taking place in Bristol, Birmingham and Nottingham.

In Lancashire, life was extremely hard for working people, wages were low, living conditions were poor and food was very expensive, so people were hungry all the time. They decided to gather for a peaceful protest in the centre of Manchester, on open land called St Peter's Field, on the morning of 16th August 1819.

Over 60,000 men, women and children, many dressed in their Sunday best, took part, carrying banners pro-democracy and anti-poverty banners bearing the words reform, equal representation and universal suffrage. Many of the banners' poles were topped with a red cap of liberty, as seen in the image below.

The Peterloo Massacre at St Peter's Field, Manchester

They were also looking forward to hearing a speech from Henry Hunt, who was nicknamed the Orator and was a advocate of universal suffrage and annual parliaments.

Worried about so many people gathering, hundreds of soldiers and special constables were summoned, in case there was trouble.

Local magistrates on seeing so many people assembling panicked read the Riot Act, which meant the people had to disperse. They also sent in the local Yeomanry (a volunteer cavalry made up of local shop owners and mill owners) to arrest Henry Hunt.

As the men rode towards Henry Hunt, the protestors linked arms. The Yeomanry, on horseback, and armed with sabres and clubs, struck out at the banners and the people.

In the violent chaos, an estimated 18 people including four women and a child died from trampling or sabre cuts. Nearly 700 were seriously injured. Some died several days after being hurt.

A new memorial plaque in Manchester now acknowledges

 the lives lost and the many who were injured 

Photo Susan Brownrigg

An inquiry cleared the Hussars and the Magistrates of any wrong-doing.

The event became known as The Peterloo Massacre - and is now believed to have heavily influenced the change to ordinary people getting the vote.

The Peterloo Massacre Monument in Manchester
 City Centre includes the names of those killed

Photo by Susan Brownrigg

While researching my next book, Wrong Tracks, a mystery inspired by the early railways and the Rainhill Trials, I discovered that on the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway in 1830, that protestors gathered again in Manchester.

The Prime Minister's railway carriage (red and gold) on
Opening Day of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway

The guest of honour for the opening was the Prime Minister, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. His carriage was very elaborate in red and gold, topped off with a coronet.

The Duke of Wellington was resolutely opposed to voting reform and he was warned that protestors were waiting for his arrival. 

A tragic accident, at Parkside which resulted in the death of another passenger, Liverpool's MP, William Huskisson, meant the Duke of Wellington wanted to turn back, but he was persuaded to continue on.

On his late arrival, the protestors waved banners marked No Corn Laws and Vote by Ballot and two tricolore flags. The Duke of Wellington was booed and hissed at, and his carriage was pelted with vegetables.

Just a few weeks after opening day, Wellesley told Parliament, "the constitution needed no improvement and that he would resist any measure of parliamentary reform as long as he was in office." Fearful of serious social unrest, his party rebelled. The Prime Minister lost a vote of confidence and a week later he was replaced as Prime Minister by Earl Grey.

Earl Grey set about reforming Britain's electoral system, resulting in the Great Reform Act of 1832.

The Great Reform Act of 1832 saw the number of MPs increased and now middle class men (who owned or lived in property worth £10 rental a year were now allowed to vote.

Further reform acts in 1867 gave the vote to working men, those in urban areas first, then rural areas, but women were still rejected.

From the mid 1890s onwards groups of women joined together to campaign for the vote - they became known as suffragists. There were regional groups, especially in urban centres like Manchester.

Suffragists campaigned using peaceful methods such as lobbying parliament.

Suffragettes were women who were determined to win the vote by any means. They believed in 'deeds not words.' They were led by Emmeline Pankhurst, who was born in Moss Side, Manchester.

The Rise Up, Women statue in St Peter's Square, Manchester,

depicts Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the Suffragist movement

Photo Susan Brownrigg

It wasn't until after WWI, in 1918, that the Representation of the People Act saw the vote given to all men aged over 21 and women aged over 30 with property - and not until 1928 for all women to be given the vote.

In 1969 the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18.

Author Susan Brownrigg at the Reform Pillar, Parbold

Photo Susan Brownrigg

The monument, known locally as The Parbold Bottle was erected by two local quarry owners to celebrate King William IV asking the Prime Minister, Earl Grey, to introduce a reform bill.

The Duke of Wellington was opposed to the railways for the rest of his life as they "encourage the lower classes to travel about."

Susan Brownrigg is a working class Lancashire lass. She is the author of the 1930s Blackpool Gracie Fairshaw mystery series and Kintana and the Captain's Curse, a treasure hunt adventure set in Madagascar during the golden age of piracy.

Wrong Tracks will be published in 2025.

Find out more at susanbrownrigg.com

Breaking the Victorian Mould: A #WomensHistoryMonth special

One of the best things about writing historical fiction is the research – although I have to confess that I can get completely sidetracked and sometimes spend far too long researching things I know I am never going to use!

I am currently writing a novel set in mid-Victorian England and my research has brought home to me how astonishingly difficult it was for Victorian girls and women to achieve anything amid the huge obstacles which Victorian society put in their way.

All classes of Victorian men – working class, middle class and probably especially upper class - believed the old maxim ‘A Woman’s Place is in the Home’ and Victorian society did everything it could to keep them there.  It took a very strong-minded woman, with talent, luck and usually some male support to break out of the mould of being a sweet, subjugated, supporter of men.

The first challenge the Victorian girl faced was that of education.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, how much education you got didn’t just depend on how much money your parents had – it also depended on whether you were a boy or a girl. Among the poorer classes, most primary-age children were educated in one of the patchwork of voluntary schools up and down the country, which provided both boys and girls with a basic education in reading, writing and arithmetic. 

Drawing © Kate Randall

After the age of 11, an intelligent boy from a poor background might have been able to continue to one of the boys’ grammar schools which had grown up around the country, but there were very few options for girls. In 1864 there were only 12 public secondary schools for girls in the whole of England and Wales.

But even if you were a girl from a wealthy background, you weren’t that much better off in terms of getting an education, especially compared to your brothers. In fact, you were very unlikely to have been to school at all. While boys were often sent to school at the age of 7, middle-class and upper-class girls were taught at home by their mothers. A small number might afford a governess, but this didn’t guarantee a better education as many of the governesses themselves were poorly educated.   

John Ruskin was a very influential Victorian writer, art critic and philosopher. 

John Ruskin

This is what he wrote in 1865 about the different ways in which men and women needed to be educated.

‘Women’s intellect is not for invention or creation…Her great function is Praise… Speaking broadly, a man ought to know any language or science he learns, thoroughly – while a woman ought to know the same language, or science, only so far as may enable her to sympathise in her husband’s pleasures, and in those of his best friends.’

The vast majority of the middle and upper classes agreed with this – women should only be educated in order to support their husbands, and certainly not to learn things for themselves! So, girls were left at home to be taught by their mothers, and if you remember that their mothers wouldn’t have been to school either, you get an idea of the sort of education they were getting. They would have learnt to read and write, and learnt a little French and a few unconnected historical facts, but you could pretty much forget anything else.

And there was another obstacle for girls. Even if your mother happened to be well-educated herself, and good at teaching, it wasn’t considered acceptable for a girl to work hard at anything intellectual. Because men’s needs always came before a woman’s needs, a girl could only carry out her studies when she wasn’t needed to fetch or carry for her father, mend her brother’s shirts, or whatever it might be. Even practising the piano seriously had to be abandoned if it disturbed someone else’s studying. 

Florence Nightingale railed against this attitude in an unpublished essay she wrote on the subject: ‘How should we learn a language if we were to give it an hour a week?... [A lady] cannot leave the breakfast-table – or she must be fulfilling some little frivolous ‘duty’...If a man were to follow up his profession or occupation at odd times, how would be do it?...It is acknowledged by women themselves that they are inferior in every occupation to men. Is it wonderful? They do everything at ‘odd times’…’

Luckily, there were strong-minded, intelligent women who fought against this prevailing attitude. Some women defied convention and learned as much as they could from books and any male relation who was happy to teach them. Others were able to take advantage of the institutions which were gradually set up as the century progressed. (By the way, in 1868 a government commission admitted that men and women had the same mental capacity!) 

Florence Nightingale

As we all know, Florence Nightingale herself blazed the trail for the nursing profession, setting up the first nursing school at St Thomas’s Hospital in London in 1860, where crucially nurses would be trained. In 1848, Queen’s College in London was founded to educate governesses. Among its students were two women, Dorothea Beale and Frances Buss, who went on to become pioneers of girls’ education: Dorothea Beale became Principal of Cheltenham Ladies’ College and Frances Buss was Headmistress of the North London Collegiate School. 

 Frances Buss 

 

In 1849, Bedford College for Women opened as the first higher education college for women in the country.  Educational reform gradually took place, alongside a changing view of the role of women, but it was a slow, slow process.

Before researching my current novel, I had sometimes looked at a list of so-called ‘Great Victorians’ and wondered why there weren’t more women on the list. I think I know now. Women had to overcome so many more obstacles than men before they could even start ‘achieving’ anything at all!

Catherine Randall’s debut novel The White Phoenix is set in London 1666, and features a strong girl breaking out of the mould society tries to force her into. It was shortlisted for the Historical Association Young Quills Award 2021.

https://catherinerandall.com/