1831 Poll Book

[Stephen J F Plowman]

I've added a link to the 1831 Poll Book in Dorset Resources.

I found my ggg-grandfather (& and his two brothers-in-law as a double check) having a freehold in an unexpected part of Dorset.  Furthermore, it looks like his cousins also had an interest in the same place.  Frustratingly it threw up a couple of new possible cousins that I am having problems locating.

[Stephen J F Plowman]

I've had a quick play around with some 1831 data;

Total (male) voters in 1831 = 3,658
Population 1831;
Total 159,252
Male 76,536
Female 82,716

I don't know what proportion of the male population were over 21.  A random guess of 50% would put those eligible to vote at under 10% of total males.

Does anyone have some hard facts?

[stockman fred]

Thank you for the link, several familiar names popped up

According to the book "A Chronicle of Britain and Ireland", the 1832 Reform Act increased the voters from 400,000 to 810,000 or 1/30 of the population.In England and Wales, this meant 1 in 5 adult males had the vote, in Scotland 1 in 8, and Ireland 1 in 20.
The second Act of 1867 doubled the electorate to 2,000,000, while the 1884 Act increased it to 5,000,000.
I wondered if the number of voters was mentioned in any of grandad's encyclopaedias from the 19th century, but couldn't find any figures. However, the 1914 "Everymans Encyclopaedia" states that even at that late date, out of a population for England and Wales of 37,000,000, there were just 6,500,000 eligible to vote .
Fred