The Great Reform Bill in the Boroughs English Electoral Behaviour 1818-1841

This is a study of popular political behaviour both before and after the Great Reform Act of 1832, the impact of which has long divided historians, some heralding it as the dawn of a new age, others dismissing it as an irrelevance. Professor Phillips has built up an extensive computer database from all available sources of information about early nineteenth-century electors - including for example poll books, tax rolls, and parish records - thus creating a uniquely comprehensive set of files containing dozens of variables about thousands of voters that permit cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. Using these techniques, he has undertaken the first systematic consideration of electoral behaviour in eight diverse English boroughs. He explores the nature of parliamentary representation in the pre-Reform era and assesses the effects of the 1832 Act, and shows that the unreformed electoral system permitted extensive popular political participation. Nevertheless, the Reform Act politicized the electorate to a degree not possible or even imaginable before, and his book establishes the role of Reform as the catalyst which shaped a new pattern of politics and launched the struggle for parliamentary democracy in Britain.

List of Tables; Abbreviations; Introduction: 1832 and All That; PART I. THE PROMISE OF REFORM; 1. Great Expectations; PART II. THE IMPACT OF REFORM; 2. Reform and Reaction: Bristol and 1832; 3. Reform Resplendent: The Political Transformation of Maidstone and Colchester; 4. Reform Act or Reform Era? Political Change in Shrewsbury and Northampton; PART III. THE LIMITATIONS OF REFORM; 5. Reform Redundant: Political Continuity in Lewes and Great Yarmouth; 6. Reform Retardent: Parliamentary and Municipal Reform in Beverley; PART IV. CLASS, RELIGION, AND REFORM; 7. Reform Refracted, 1: Working and Voting; 8. Reform Refracted, 2: Praying and Voting; Conclusion: The Great Reform Bill?; Bibliography; Index.