Showing my ignorance - Voting registers

[acceber]

Although be aware that depending on the wealth and location of your ancestor they may not appear on the register.

The legal requirement for voting registers (or poll books) to be kept was established under the reform act of 1832. Although in many counties and boroughs, poll books were kept centuries before.

Britain did not have universal male suffrage (the right for all men over 21 to vote without any qualifications) until 1918.

Before this men could only vote if they were a householder, so younger sons over 21 could not vote if they still lived at home.

As of 1867 men had the right to vote in the boroughs (urban areas) if they owned or lodged in property worth at least £10 a year. In 1884 this right was extended to men living in the counties (rural) areas aswell, before 1884 men in the counties had ther right to vote but the qualifications were stricter and not the same as those for men in the boroughs. Before the 1832 reform Act the qualifications for having the right to varied greatly from place to place and the 1884 Act established a uniform set of qualifications for the towns and countryside.

For more info see wikipedia's entries on the many Representation of the People Acts for 1832, 1867, 1884, 1918, etc etc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representation_of_the_People_Act

So don't be too disappointed if you can't find your ancestor on an electoral register!

acceber

[Lones]

Thank you Stan and Acceber

I will check out the links now

And no, I won't be too disappointed, but I might have some on there, you never know!! 

Cheers

Lones

[Simon G.]

Before the 1832 reform Act the qualifications for having the right to varied greatly from place to place

As an aside, some of the voting qualifications they had were somewhat unusual.  Most common were those that existed on a property qualification (which I can't remember the term for) or on the basis of the freeman vote (which really speaks for itself in that to vote you had to be a freeman).  But some were far more unusual, such as the potwalloper boroughs...where the vote was granted on the basis of the size of the hearth in your home, which had to be large enough to contain a pot you could boil in.  The irony is that in potwalloper boroughs, before 1832 the suffrage was far more universal than after.

It wasn't uncommon though for the system to be abused in the worst possible ways, and the right to vote was by no means a guarantee you could vote the way you would have wanted to...electoral fraud was incredibly common before the secret ballot was introduced in the 1870s, with landowners either bribing or dictating to voters which way to vote.

[Lones]

Good heavens

They sound like a charming lot, you could only vote if you were rich or had a large hearth, and then richer people told you how to vote.   Good grief, and they call them the "good old days"....

Thanks for the info Simon 

Cheers

Lones

[Simon G.]

It's easy to understand why people were so vocal about the need for reform in 1832 given how things used to be...which was a system that had literally been there for centuries, going back to at least the civil war and sometimes back beyond that.  It was incredibly unfair, but such was the mindset at the time...no-one except for a select few radicals and the Chartists ever really entertained the idea of universal suffrage.
MPs were for the most part the landed gentry, and it was for the most part the landed gentry who got to decide who stood in Parliament.  If it wasn't for threat of a revolution akin to that in France, it's possible things would never have changed.

[Lones]

Go the "poor folk", I say.  It's lucky for us all that they finally succeeded.

Glad I live today!!

 

Lones

[sarra]

Lones,

This link may help with the Australian Electoral Rolls.
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~dpsoc/rolls.htm
Also if you have a local library with a good Genealogy Section, they would have some on microfiche - but probably not the very early years.
Unfortunately there is not much information recorded on them.

Sarra

[Lones]

Thanks Sarra

I will try my local library, they have a Genealogy section, so will see aht I can find

Thank you for the tip and the link

Lones