Nottingham

Economic and social profile:

Located on the river Trent, the economy of the county town of Nottingham was dominated by the hosiery industry and its subsidiary lace making. With the population chiefly employed in the manufacture of lace, cotton, silk and bobbinet, and in accessory operations such as dyeing, bleaching and engine making, the influence of the textile trades was considerable.3S.D. Chapman, ‘Industry and Trade’, in J. Beckett (ed.), A Centenary History of Nottingham (1997), 317. By 1844 the town had several leading hosiery firms: Hine and Mundella owned 3,000 frames; I and R Morley 2,700, and Heard and Hurst 2,000. However, with only 31 out of 113 hosiers listed in an 1844 directory having converted to factory production, the town was gradually transferring its manufacturing profile from the stocking to the lace trade, the most prominent manufacturer being Richard Birkin, who employed 2,250 workers.4VCH Notts, ii. 361-2. Cyclical unemployment and commercial distress being rife, strikes were frequent and an 1844 government inquiry into the state of large towns described conditions in Nottingham as ‘so very bad as hardly to be surpassed in misery by anything to be found within the entire range of our manufacturing cities’.5PP 1844 (610), xvii. 250. The 1845 Nottingham Enclosure Act began to slowly ameliorate this situation, releasing new land for the development of houses and factories. After staunch opposition from the Nottingham Canal Company and the Trent Navigation Company, the first train reached Nottingham on 30 May 1839, but, served only by a branch line from Derby, its location as an outpost of the North Midland line caused much local dissatisfaction, and there was no main line route to London until 1880.6R. Church, Economic and Social Change in a Midland Town (1996), 170-3.

Electoral history:

The thread of violent protest that ran through Nottingham’s elections between the first and second reform acts made the borough synonymous with corruption, disorder and intimidation. The burning down of Nottingham castle by pro-reform rioters in 1831, in protest against the rejection of parliamentary reform by the duke of Newcastle, had shown the inhabitants of Nottingham to be volatile but politically well-informed.7J. Beckett, ‘Parliament and the localities: the borough of Nottingham’, Parliamentary History, xvii (1998), 67. Having been a centre of religious dissent in the first half of the nineteenth century, the borough was essentially controlled by a Whig corporation dominated by a group of prosperous middle-class dissenting families. Winning 27 out of 42 seats at its first town council election on 26 December 1835, the Whigs never completely lost their grip on municipal politics, and effectively controlled the nomination of official Liberal candidates for parliamentary elections.8J. Beckett, ‘Radical Nottingham’ in J. Beckett (ed.), A Centenary History of Nottingham (1997), 306. Yet there was a deeply embedded radical tradition among the inhabitants of Nottingham,9HP Commons, 1820-32. leading not only to factionalism within local Liberalism, but also the rise of a strong Chartist movement that culminated in the borough electing Feargus O’Connor in 1847.

The first election of the post-reform era witnessed the comfortable return of the two Liberals. A vacancy occurring due to the appointment of Sir Thomas Denham as Lord Chief Justice, the sitting Reformer, Sir Ronald Ferguson, was joined by the Whig whip Viscount Duncannon, who had been instrumental in drafting the reform bill. After a protracted search, the Conservatives finally brought forward James Gordon, a Londoner who had sat for the Irish constituency of Dundalk in the 1831 parliament and voted against reform.10A.C. Wood, ‘Nottingham electoral history, 1832-61’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society, lix (1955), 69. Lord Grey having suggested his name to the corporation, Duncannon, who declared his support for civil and religious liberty and the abolition of slavery, was labelled by his opponents the ‘nominee from Downing Street’, an accusation not helped by his failure to appear in person at Nottingham until the nomination. Gordon thus played up his independence, and his Protestantism, in a calculated effort to attack Duncannon for his well-known liberal policy towards Catholics.11D. Howell-Thomas, Duncannon: reformer and reconciler, 1781-1847 (1992), 158-62. However, the late introduction of Gordon made little impact, and Ferguson, who had promised that whenever he disagreed with a majority of his constituents he would resign, topped the poll.12Morning Chronicle, 12 Dec. 1832.

The by-election of 1834, necessitated by Duncannon’s appointment as secretary of state, saw the first signs of an emerging tension between the Radical and Whig sections of local Liberalism. Proposed by the Whig corporation, and backed by Earl Rancliffe, who held considerable property in the area, Sir John Cam Hobhouse endured a turbulent campaign. With the Conservatives declining to put forward a candidate, Hobhouse’s sole opponent was William Eagle, a Suffolk lawyer who was invited to stand by a group of local Radicals led by the prominent dissenters George Gill, a lace commission agent, and Benjamin Boothby, an iron founder. Advocating repeal of the corn laws, household suffrage and vote by ballot, Eagle stressed his independence, declaring that he was ‘not sent down from Downing-Street, packed up in a box, labelled and ticketed to the Corporation of Nottingham’, although the fact that he was backed publicly by Daniel O’Connell led to accusations that he was merely the puppet of ‘Irish agitators’, and that Gill and Boothby were not reformers but ‘anarchists’.13Morning Chronicle, 25 July 1834. Eagle’s invective was mirrored by the actions of his supporters, with Hobhouse forced to leave an election meeting, with ‘characters shrieking’ and throwing a mass of cat-o’-nine tails towards the platform, in reference to his retention of corporal punishment while he was secretary of war.14Morning Chronicle, 24 July 1834. After the nomination, the show of hands was greatly in favour of Eagle, but ‘there was not one in fifty amongst those held up, whose owner had a vote’, a fact reflected by Hobhouse’s commanding victory. 15Morning Chronicle, 25 July 1834.

Backed by the corporation, Hobhouse and Ferguson were unopposed at the 1835 general election, and Hobhouse’s sole candidacy at the by-election three months later, following his appointment to the board of control for India, prompted the Conservative Nottingham Review to ask ‘how long Nottingham is to remain a mere nomination borough, a kind of Old Sarum on a large scale under the patronage of a small knot of resident Whigs’.16Quotation taken from Wood, ‘Nottingham electoral history’, 70. Although Hobhouse and Ferguson were opposed at the 1837 general election, the two Conservative candidates made little impact. Horace Twiss, who had previously represented Wootton Bassett, Newport and Bridport, and strongly opposed the reform bill, remained diffident about any further franchise extension, and as William Plowden, a silk merchant, entered the contest at the last moment, the return of the council’s nominees was never under threat.17Ibid.

The electoral supremacy of the Whig council’s candidates was shattered at the 1841 by-election, triggered by the death of Ferguson, where John Walter, proprietor of The Times, beat George Gerard De Hochepied Larpent, becoming the first Tory to sit for Nottingham for 35 years. There can be little doubt that Walter, who presented himself as an anti-poor law candidate, arguing that he would ‘assist in removing … its oppressive provisions’, benefited from Chartist support. 18The Times, 27 Apr. 1841. Local opposition to the new Poor Law was especially significant among the framework knitters who had played a prominent role in the first major Chartist meeting held at Nottingham in November 1838.19Beckett, ‘Radical Nottingham’, 302-4. The largest Chartist demonstrations at Nottingham drew between 20,000 and 30,000 people, including a large number of women and children, and the town contributed 17,000 signatures to its first petition.20J. Epstein, ‘Some organisational and cultural aspects of the Chartist movement in Nottingham’, in J. Epstein and D. Thompson (eds), The Chartist Experience: studies in working-class radicalism and culture, 1830-60 (1982), 229-30. Addressing this wide organisational base, the Northern Star urged Chartists to back Walter ‘not as Walter, but as an emblem of English hatred to starvation, transportation, incarceration, and everything that is base’.21Quotation taken from J. Saville, The lion of freedom: Feargus O’Connor and the Chartist movement, 1832-1842 (1982), 279. Thus, although Larpent stood on an advanced Liberal platform, supporting the repeal of the corn laws, the ballot and the abolition of church rates, his promise to ‘monitor closely’ the workings of the Poor Law was not enough to compromise the Tory-Chartist alliance, which secured Walter’s return.22The Times, 19 Apr. 1841.

Walter had hardly taken his seat before the 1841 general election took place, and the borough was immersed in a bloody campaign that saw troops called in to break up gang fights.23Beckett, ‘Radical Nottingham’, 302. Walter, who was joined as a candidate by his son-in-law Thomas Charlton, continued his denunciations of the Poor Law, but it soon became clear that bribery and violence would determine the outcome. With Walter describing his Liberal opponents as ‘two game cocks, ready clipped and weighed, their spurs tipped with gold’,24R.E. Zegger, John Cam Hobhouse: a political life, 1819-1852 (1973), 234. the joint expenses of Hobhouse and Larpent reputedly came to over £12,000.25PP 1842 (458), v. 77-84, 88. Gangs of local men known as ‘lambs’ - essentially groups of bullies willing to sell their services as required - were hired by both sides and accommodated in public houses, and turned the campaign into bedlam. On polling day, the mayhem increased, prompting the Conservative candidates to withdraw from the poll. They promptly organised a petition, presented 25 Aug. 1841, but after one day’s hearing by a committee of inquiry, a compromise was privately arranged between the two parties and the action was dropped, 4 May 1842. Local Whig leaders agreed to pay the petition costs, Larpent took the Chiltern Hundreds, and pledges were given that no opposition would be offered to the return of Walter to the vacant seat. A signed promissory note for £4,000 had also been deposited, which was to be handed to Walter if the conditions were not met.26N. Gash, Politics in the age of Peel (1953), 144. However, with ‘grave reasons for suspicions’ being raised about this outcome, a new writ was not issued, and a subsequent select committee appointed to investigate alleged corrupt compromises exposed the private arrangement.27Hansard, 6 May 1842, vol. 63, cc. 213, 219; PP 1842 (458), v. 77-84. The 1842 inquiry also revealed that the employment of ‘lambs’ had begun at the 1837 general election, and that the practice of ‘cooping’ voters at various places and plying them with drink until polling day was extensively carried out.28PP 1842 (458), v. 164-5.

True to their word, the Whig leaders on the council offered no opposition to John Walter at the 1842 by-election, but the local Radicals joined forces with the Chartists to run Joseph Sturge, a Quaker. Flanked by Feargus O’Connor, Sturge’s radicalism went further than the Charter, and his call for complete male suffrage alienated moderate Whigs, prompting Walter to argue that universal suffrage would ‘raise the idle and profligate to the same level with the most honest and most industrious members of society’.29The Times, 2 Aug. 1842. Sturge was undoubtedly handicapped by his refusal to bribe; the less scrupulous Walter invited electors to breakfast before taking them to the poll that he subsequently won.30Wood, ‘Nottingham electoral history’, 75-6. Following a petition lodged by the local Radical George Gill against the return, 9 Aug. 1842 however, Walter was found, through his agents, guilty of bribery and treating, and duly unseated, 23 Mar. 1843.

Following Walter’s removal, Nottingham faced its fourth parliamentary election in three years. With Walter’s son, John, standing for the Conservatives, the Whig council leaders adopted Thomas Gisborne, who had previously represented Staffordshire, North Derbyshire and Carlow. Presented to the constituency by Earl Rancliffe as ‘a thorough-paced radical’, Gisborne endured an awkward nomination speech, where he was constantly asked by Feargus O’Connor to clarify his position regarding the Charter. 31Wood, ‘Nottingham electoral history’, 76. Recognising the importance of the town’s Chartist vote, Gisborne eventually conceded that he had nothing against the removal of a property qualification, and that he supported extension of suffrage, with an efficient system of registration, and annual parliaments, prompting O’Connor to say ‘If I understand Mr. Gisborne aright, I am satisfied’.32The Times, 10 Apr. 1843. With Walter declaring that he would not support the Charter if returned, Gisborne won the poll. A subsequent petition against him, 20 June 1843, came to nothing.

At the 1847 general election Feargus O’Connor himself was invited to stand by Richard Sutton, editor of the Nottingham Review, in a letter published in the Northern Star, which stated Nottingham was tired of ‘do-nothing, kid-glove reformers’.33Northern Star, 13 Feb. 1847. O’Connor’s chances of victory appeared slim, and the Northern Star did not even send a reporter to the borough.34M. Chase, ‘“Labour’s candidates”: Chartist challenges at the Parliamentary Polls, 1839-1860’, Labour History Review, lxxiv (2009), 75. However, Hobhouse, who refused to pay more than his legal expenses,35Zegger, Hobhouse, 238. and Gisborne, whose opposition to factory regulation and the framework knitters bill had upset local Chartists,36Nottingham Guardian, 17 May 1847. both ran lacklustre campaigns, and desperately emphasised their support for the Charter.37Nottingham Review, 30 July 1847. Shaping his stance accordingly, O’Connor appealed to local dissenters by advocating church disestablishment and non-sectarian education, while saying little about Chartism so as not to offend local Conservatives. John Walter, who did not appear in the constituency until polling day, stood as a nominal Conservative candidate, although he was essentially a Peelite; his backing of the repeal of the corn laws gaining him moderate Whig support. 38Wood, ‘Nottingham electoral history’, 77-81. With Walter and O’Connor topping the poll after a surprisingly lifeless contest, a crowd numbering ten thousand gathered in the market place to cheer the election of the first Chartist MP, a result which The Times claimed was ‘as surprising an occurrence as could possibly arise from the mere movements of human opinion and feeling’.39The Times, 31 July 1847. There were several reasons for O’Connor’s victory. The severe economic depression that afflicted Nottingham in 1847, with 1,000 people in the workhouse and 3,000 receiving outdoor relief, contributed, and the Chartist leader certainly benefitted from Hobhouse’s unpopularity, as some Whig electors did not use their vote and many Catholic electors united in endorsing O’Connor. Ironically however, the main reason for his victory was arguably the support given to him by Conservative electors, including the two men who proposed and seconded Walter.40S. Roberts, ‘Feargus O’Connor in the House of Commons, 1847-1852’ in O. Ashton, R. Fyson and S. Roberts (eds.), The Chartist Legacy (1999), 104-7; C. Binder, ‘The Nottingham electorate and the election of the Chartist Feargus O’Connor in 1847’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society, cvii (2003), 145-62.

After the turbulent campaigns of the 1840s, the three general elections and two uncontested by-elections that Nottingham witnessed in the 1850s were relatively uneventful. At the 1852 general election, following the retirement of Gisborne due to ill health, the council focused their efforts solely on Edward Strutt, who had previously represented Derby and Arundel, and appealed directly to the town’s dissenters by unambiguously supporting the abolition of church rates.41Morning Chronicle, 17 Apr. 1852. Charles Sturgeon, a barrister, stood on a Chartist platform, but, with the Nottingham movement having lost momentum,42Epstein, ‘Organisational and cultural aspects’, 259. and local Conservatives disturbed by O’Connor’s erratic behaviour in the Commons,43The Times, 8 July 1852. he polled only 512 votes. With a large proportion of plumpers, Strutt and Walter, who had sat with the Liberals at Westminster and now used the ‘Liberal-Conservative’ label, were comfortably returned. The decision of the sheriff to take a poll in each ward, so as to prevent a concentration of masses of people in the market-square, ensured that polling day was characterised by ‘an unusual absence of political excitement’.44Ibid.

Strutt, who was returned unopposed at the 1853 by-election triggered by his appointment as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, was elevated to the Lords in July 1856, prompting the council to seek a new candidate. Although Charles Paget, a local manufacturer and agriculturalist, was unopposed, the campaign was not without intrigue, as an alternative candidate, backed by a section of the council, had come forward in the ultra-Sabbath interest, in opposition to Paget’s support for Sir Joshua Walmsley’s bill to open the British Museum and the National Gallery on Sundays. However, the intervention of Anthony Mundella, a Nottingham manufacturer and leading local Liberal who later served as MP for Sheffield, secured Paget’s unopposed return.45Daily News, 5 Aug. 1856.

The Chartists continued to contest Nottingham at the general elections of 1857 and 1859, their chosen candidate on both occasions being the barrister, poet and novelist Ernest Jones. After a short acceptance of the Charter, Jones’s 1857 election address focused specifically on a radical solution to the land question, calling for the cultivation of thirty million acres of land.46M. Taylor, Ernest Jones, Chartism and the romance of politics (2003), 181. However, as highlighted in the poll sheets, plumping was again evident and Paget, the only candidate put forward by the corporation, and the ever-popular Walter, who urged an extension of the franchise, enjoyed a decisive victory.47‘Poll Sheets of the Nottingham Election’, Nottingham Review, 3 Apr. 1857. Facing two corporation candidates, Jones fared even worse in 1859, polling only 151 votes, even though he had spent 9 days in the borough, and established a National Manhood Suffrage Association to raise election funds.48Taylor, Ernest Jones, 186-7. (He attributed the decrease to the attacks on his financial propriety by George Reynolds in the latter’s newspaper, and after the election he successfully sued Reynolds for libel.49J. Saville, Ernest Jones: Chartist (1952), 72-3.) With Walter deciding to seek the Liberal nomination in his home county of Berkshire, and a potential Liberal-Conservative candidate withdrawing, Thomas Bromley came forward in the Conservative interest. Bromley’s lack of appeal to moderates, evident in the significant number of votes he received from plumpers, coupled with Jones’s inability to harness local Radical support gave the council a chance to reassert their authority over parliamentary elections, and standing on identical platforms of supporting the ballot, abolition of church rates and extension of the franchise, Paget and John Mellor, a Unitarian lawyer who had previously represented Great Yarmouth, were comfortably elected.50‘Poll Sheets of the Nottingham Election’, Nottingham Review, 6 May 1859. Although the Chartists did not put forward another candidate after 1859, Chartism continued to have some influence in local politics, and James Sweet, the leader of the Nottingham movement, still considered himself a Chartist as late as 1872.51Beckett, ‘Radical Nottingham’, 304.

The town council appeared to have misjudged the local mood at the 1861 by-election when they put forward the earl of Lincoln, son of the duke of Newcastle. To the surprise of many in the borough, Sir Robert Juckes Clifton, a local landowner, came forward as an Independent Liberal challenger. The charismatic Clifton, who endeared himself to the local workers by being surprisingly candid about his love of a ‘flutter’ and showing complete disregard for teetotalism, favoured a programme of advanced Liberalism, including the abolition of church rates and franchise extension.52Daily News, 27 Dec. 1861. However, the cornerstone of his campaign was his fervent denunciations of the council’s parliamentary election committee, now known pejoratively as ‘Number Thirty’, after the room in the Exchange where they met, an approach that resonated with local Radicals and Conservatives alike, frustrated with the council’s stranglehold on nominations. Clifton’s generous entertainment of voters, reputedly at a cost of £8,000, and his indulgence of the ‘lambs’, who roamed the town insulting Lincoln’s supporters, further cemented his position, and with the Conservatives failing to nominate a candidate, and the total absence of Lincoln through ailing health, he decisively topped the poll.53A.C. Wood, ‘Sir Robert Clifton, 1826-69’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society, lvii (1953), 56; Beckett, ‘Radical Nottingham’, 305-6.

The 1865 general election in Nottingham witnessed disorder, bribery and near-terrorism. On 26 June supporters of the two Liberal candidates, Paget and Samuel Morley, the local manufacturer and philanthropist, were attacked by Clifton’s lambs as they arrived at Nottingham station.54Beckett, ‘Radical Nottingham’, 305-6. The day after the riot, Clifton denied any responsibility, and warned the mayor that he would be ‘responsible for every drop of blood that may be shed’.55Derby Mercury, 28 June 1865. With local Conservatives bringing forward only one candidate and pledging to support Clifton, the outcome of the election was unpredictable and polling day was a tense affair, with another eruption of violence as stones were thrown at all candidates, and Paget and Morley’s committee rooms completely wrecked. Morley and Clifton, who was duly supported by Conservative voters,56‘Poll Sheet of the Nottingham Election’, Nottingham Daily Guardian, 14 July 1865. topped the poll, leading to Paget presenting a petition to parliament, 7 Feb. 1866, complaining of an undue election. Another petition against Morley also called Paget’s conduct into question,57The Times, 10 Apr. 1866, 13. Apr. 1866. and the subsequent investigation by the election committee found Morley and Paget’s agents guilty of bribery, and Clifton’s agents guilty of undue influence. Nottingham’s most bloody election was therefore declared void, 20 Apr. 1866.58Hansard, 20 Apr. 1866, vol. 182, cc. 1766-8; The Times, 21 Apr. 1866.

At the ensuing double by-election of 1866, ‘Number Thirty’ remained the centre of attention. Standing as an independent Liberal, Ralph Bernal Osborne, who had previously represented High Wycombe, Middlesex, Dover and Liskeard, characterised his campaign as ‘a struggle against the dictation of a few wirepullers’59P.H. Bagenal, The life of Ralph Bernal Osborne MP (London, 1884), 230. and declared ‘I do not intend … to be the slave of any party or any man, but I intend to have an opinion of my own’.60Nottingham Journal, 7 June 1866. The beleaguered council brought forward Handel Cossham, a Bristol colliery owner, and Viscount Amberley, the son of the prime minister Earl Russell, who endured a particularly rough campaign, his opponents dressing dolls as babies in ridicule of his youth.61Pall Mall Gazette, 11 May 1866. Supported by the local Independent Society, which had been established in 1861 by supporters of Clifton as a rival political association to ‘Number Thirty’, and helped by the Conservatives who, as had now become the custom, brought forward only one candidate, Osborne topped the poll, with Amberley capturing second place. Without a doubt, the personal endorsement of Osborne by Clifton, who was seen by Conservatives and Radicals as the antithesis of the Whig-dominated ‘Number Thirty’, was an important factor in 1866, and the polling records confirm the extent of Conservative support for Osborne.62‘Poll Sheet for the Nottingham Election’, Nottingham Review, 18 May 1866. Following Clifton’s victory at the top of the polls two years later, the Nottingham Express lamented the fact that ‘if Liberalism is in the ascendant in this town, it can be at any time completely overridden by the paramount personal influence of Sir Robert Clifton’.63Nottingham Daily Express, 18 Nov. 1868.

The Nottingham Liberals continued to be plagued by factionalism and duplicate candidatures after 1868, their nadir being 1874 when two Conservatives slipped in. The Nottingham Borough Extension Act of 1877, which added the industrial parishes of Radford, Lenton, Sneinton, Basford and Bulwell to the borough, entrenched the working-class and nonconformist nature of the constituency, and in the process, created 16 new electoral wards that provided the impetus for improved local Liberal organisation. In 1880, two official Liberals topped the poll, and in 1885, after the borough of Nottingham became three single-member constituencies, all three Liberal candidates were returned. Although John Burns, standing on behalf of the Social-Democratic Federation, contested Nottingham West in 1885, and the Nottingham branch of the Independent Labour party was well established by 1893, there was little concerted labour challenge at parliamentary elections until after the First World War. The development of labour politics in Nottingham has been addressed by a number of historians, most comprehensively by Peter Wyncoll’s The Nottingham labour movement, 1880-1939 (1985).64See also R. Bell, ‘Later starter? The rise of the Labour party in Nottingham, 1890-1939’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire, civ (2000), 125-33