Parliamentary Constituencies and Their Registers Since 1832
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
PARLIAMENTARY CONSTITUENCIES AND THEIR REGISTERS SINCE 1832 www.bl.uk/subjects/national-and-international-government-publications A list of constituencies from the Great Reform Act with the British Library's holdings of electoral registers together with the Library's holdings of burgess rolls, poll books and other registers BY RICHARD H. A. CHEFFINS REVISED BY JACQUIE CARTER, ANDREW CLEVELAND, JENNIE GRIMSHAW AND MIKE STANBRIDGE CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................... 1 The British Library’s collection......................................................................... 1 Other sources................................................................................................. 4 Parliamentary representation.......................................................................... 7 The Franchise ................................................................................................. 8 Constituencies.............................................................................................. 12 The contents of registers .............................................................................. 18 Dates of registers.......................................................................................... 20 A summary of recent developments ............................................................. 23 HOW TO FIND ELECTORAL REGISTERS IN THE BRITISH LIBRARY ................. 28 Examples of different searches...................................................................... 31 ABBREVIATIONS.............................................................................................. 33 PARLIAMENTARY CONSTITUENCIES AND THEIR REGISTERS SINCE 1832 ..... 34 APPENDICES.................................................................................................. 340 Pre-1832 constituencies ............................................................................. 340 Pre-partition Irish registers.......................................................................... 342 Irish, Manx and Channel Island registers..................................................... 344 University parliamentary registers............................................................... 346 Non-parliamentary registers....................................................................... 347 Poll books...................................................................................................357 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................. 368 Legislation.................................................................................................. 368 Parliamentary Orders.................................................................................. 370 Standard Notes........................................................................................... 371 Boundary Commission reports.................................................................... 371 Reference works consulted......................................................................... 373 Parliamentary constituencies INTRODUCTION The British Library’s collection The British Library has a unique collection of printed British electoral registers (their formal name is ‘Registers of Electors’) from 1832 to date. This collection occupies some 2.25 miles (ca 3.62 km) of shelves. If the collection continues to grow at the current rate (c. 41-42m per year) by 2024 they will be spread over more than 4 km. Under the Representation of the people (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2002 and 2006 (SI 2002 No. 1871 and SI 2006 No. 752), Representation of the people (Scotland) (Amendment) Regulations 2002 and 2006 (SI 2002 No. 1872 and SI 2006 No. 834), Representation of the people (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Regulations 2002 (SI 2002 No.1873), Representation of the People (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2008 (SI 2008 No. 1741) and under earlier legislation going back to 1947, the Library has received for over 67 years and retains a complete set of printed registers for the whole of the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland). This applies to no other institution. The National Libraries of Scotland and Wales like the British Libray both have a patchy collection prior to 1946 but only for their respective countries. Their collections are then more or less complete from then on but again for their own countries only. Under the current legislation there are a limited number of other deposited sets. Since 2006 the British Library has been entitled to receive both print and data copies of registers from England, Scotland and Wales. Current legislation covering the registers for Northern Ireland does not contain an entitlement for the British Library to obtain a copy in data format. The National Library of Wales although acquiring both print and data copies for Wales is not able to make the data copy available for access at the current time. The situation in Scotland is different as some registers for Scotland continue to be supplied and made available in print whereas others are provided in data form. There is no access to these data copies at the National Library of Scotland. The collection at the National Library of Scotland is therefore less complete after 2006 than it was between 1946 and 2006. If you are planning to visit either of these libraries to look at a specific register it is strongly recommended that you first contAct the relevant library in advance of your visit. It might be thought that, as published works, copies of electoral registers should have been deposited under the Copyright Act 1911 (1&2 Geo.5, cap.46) not only with the British Library but with the other legal deposit or copyright libraries - the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Cambridge University Library, the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales, and Trinity College, Dublin - but this has not happened. Firstly, there was doubt as to the legal status of registers; whether or not they were truly ‘published’ within the meaning of the Act. True, current and 1 Parliamentary constituencies earlier legislation refers to the registers having to be published but this in the context means only that they must be made available for inspection by the public at council offices and, usually, public libraries during normal opening hours. For the British Museum Library (the predecessor of the British Library) and, by implication for the other copyright libraries, the doubt was resolved by the Regulations dated October 12, 1932 made by the British Museum under the British Museum Act 1932 as to publications not required, belatedly published in 1935 as SR&O 1935 No.278. This set out a list of publications excluded from the requirement of legal deposit and, among excluded ephemera like calendars and local railway timetables, were electoral registers. Much of the material formally excluded by these regulations had, in practice, never been deposited or claimed and, for electoral registers, deposit at the British Museum had been patchy at best. As for the other copyright libraries, their entitlement to British publications was not automatic as with the British Museum or British Library but only ‘on demand’ and, in practice, they have never demanded electoral registers, the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales being partial exceptions as noted above. The British Library, therefore, has the only comprehensive nationwide collection of non-current electoral registers received since 1947 under electoral legislation, initially the Electoral registration regulations 1947 (SR&O 1947 No.1646), rather than copyright legislation. It also has earlier registers which, though far from complete, are nevertheless extensive, some 25,000 registers in total. The story of their acquisition is curious. In 1832, when registration began, a handful of registers were received by the British Museum and these were duly catalogued and added to the general stock of the library; and their records can still be found in the General catalogue of printed books and its online successor, Explore the British Library. The authorities that supplied these few registers generally did not continue so to do and the 1832 registers that the Library holds are usually the only ones for the constituencies concerned. Over the next few decades a handful more of isolated registers were supplied; others have been acquired by purchase or donation. These too were catalogued and added to the general stock of the Library. Together they number a few dozen out of potentially several thousand electoral registers. It would seem that, at this time, registers were seldom deposited and never claimed by the British Museum. This changed in the autumn of 1863 when, it is clear, a concerted effort was made to rectify the matter and a circular was obviously dispatched to the appropriate authorities requesting not only copies of the then current registers but also back runs of earlier ones. The evidence for this is that all registers prior to 1864 in the electoral register collection (i.e. excluding the few in the general collection) bear a receipt stamp dated ‘1864’ (some dated quite early in the year which suggests the chasing began late in the previous year) and, for any given constituency, the stamped date is all the same. A few registers then supplied go back unbroken to 1832 but most are less complete and a few bear a pasted-in letter apologising for the gaps in the holdings.