Economic and social profile:
A port, commercial centre and seat of learning, Aberdeen was the largest city in north-eastern Scotland. A textile industry had developed in the late eighteenth century and employed around 14,000 in the 1840s.R. Perren, ‘The nineteenth-century economy’, in W. Hamish Fraser and C.H. Lee (eds.), Aberdeen, 1800-2000: a new history (2000), 75-6. Shipbuilding and paper-making were also well established. Aberdeen’s status as a major port meant that it was well served with insurance agencies and banks, including the Aberdeen Banking Company (established 1766), the North of Scotland Bank (1836), and the Aberdeen Town and Country Bank (1826).Ibid., 76-7, 79-80. In the early 1830s over 200 vessels belonged to the port, employing over 2,000 seamen engaged in the East India, American, Baltic, Mediterranean and coasting trades.PP 1831-32 (408), xlii. 21. The deposits of granite in the surrounding area provided a staple export, although technological challenges meant that extraction peaked in the later nineteenth century.Perren, ‘The nineteenth-century economy’, 93. Fishing was another element of a diverse local economy, but Aberdeen only superseded Fraserburgh and Peterhead as a fishing centre with the development of the steam trawler in the later nineteenth century.Ibid., 87-91.
After the 1848 commercial crisis, the textile industry began to decline. The losses sustained by many manufacturers who had invested in railway stock led to a number of closures. In any case, the failure to upgrade technology and the city’s distance from raw materials and markets gave Aberdeen a ‘long-term disadvantage’ in textiles compared to other places.Ibid., 81-2. The crash of 1848 gave way to sluggish economic growth during the 1850s and 1860s before the economy thrived in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods.Ibid., 82. Transport links included the Aberdeen to Banchory railway line (1853), later extended to Aboyne and Ballater (1859, 1866), the Buchan line (1862) and the Speyside line (1866).Ibid.
Presbyterianism was the dominant religious creed in the city, but its strength was divided between the Established Church, Voluntaries (or Presbyterian Dissenters), and the Free Church. After the Great Disruption, or schism, in the Church of Scotland, all fifteen parish ministers in Aberdeen left the establishment to join the Free Church.A.A. MacLaren, ‘The Disruption of the “Establishment”: James Adam and the Aberdeen clergy’, in J.S. Smith and D. Stevenson eds., Aberdeen in the nineteenth century: the making of the modern city (1988), 106-20 (at 108). The 1851 religious census confirmed that the well-funded Free Church had ‘established a remarkable numerical superiority’.Ibid., 109. Of the 34,543 who attended a religious service on the census day, 13,913 (40.2%) went to one of the 15 Free Churches in the city, compared to 7,734 (22.3%) attending to the 7 established churches. Presbyterian Dissenters accounted for 4,421 (12.7%) and Episcopalians 1,100 (3.1%).PP 1854 [1764], lix. 335.
Electoral history:
Aberdeen has been described by Michael Dyer in his study of the Scottish electoral system in the Victorian period as ‘one of the few Scottish constituencies which could be described as independent’.M. Dyer, Men of property and intelligence: the Scottish electoral system prior to 1884 (1996), 69. The city had a large electorate by Scottish standards and a lively political culture. Aberdeen’s electoral history in this period reflected broader political trends within urban Scotland. Aberdeen remained in Liberal hands throughout this period, but after 1841 the Conservatives did not again contest the city until 1872. Instead electoral politics was increasingly shaped by divisions within local Liberalism, which centred on religious issues. The dispute within the Church of Scotland over the patronage question and the subsequent secession of the Free Church dissolved the relatively clear partisan dividing lines of the 1832-41 period, ushering a period of confusion, often involving bewildering shifts in electoral alliances.Had the city had two MPs it is possible that some of these differences might have been reconciled through electoral compromises. However, given that the double-member constituencies of Edinburgh and Glasgow had no shortage of bitter contests fuelled by religious disputes between various factions, it seems unlikely.
The local newspaper press played a vital part in sustaining a lively political culture.This paragraph is based on W.H. Fraser, ‘The Press’, in Fraser and Lee, Aberdeen, 1800-2000, 448-65. The two leading newspapers were the Conservative Aberdeen Journal (established 1748) and the Liberal Aberdeen Herald (est. 1832), which had circulations of 2,800 and 2,300 respectively during the 1840s. The Herald’s editor James Adam was a prominent figure in local politics and a critic of the Free Church. Other papers that flourished for a time included the Aberdeen Observer (1829-37) and Aberdeen Constitutional (1832-43), which were both Tory, while short-lived Chartist publications included the Aberdeen Patriot (1838-9) and Northern Vindicator (1839). The Aberdeen Banner (1839-51) was the organ of the Free Church.
Before 1832 the politics of Aberdeen was dominated by a Tory clique headed by the Hadden family, textile manufacturers and landowners, who controlled the self-electing corporation. Aberdeen had been grouped together with four other burghs to return one MP representing the Aberdeen burghs, with the right of voting vested in the corporations. This meant that the Tory preferences of Aberdeen’s corporation could be defeated if it was outvoted by a majority of the other burghs, as occurred between 1818 and 1830, when the liberal Forfar burghs of Arbroath, Brechin and Montrose formed an alliance to return the radical Joseph Hume as MP.HP Commons, 1820-1832, iii. 567-74. Although the corporation was able to secure a Tory MP in 1830 after Hume retired, he was ousted the following year by a Reformer.Ibid., 571-3.
The 1832 Scottish Reform Act separated Aberdeen from the burgh district, giving it independent representation as a single member burgh. (The town of Forfar was added to the former grouping which became known as Montrose burghs). For the first time, Scottish burghs had a popular franchise. In 1832 Aberdeen’s new electorate of £10 householders stood at 2,024, rising to 4,547 by 1852. However, after the passage of the 1856 Burgh Registration Act, which facilitated a more rigorous purging of Scottish electoral registers, the electorate fell to 2,346 in 1857, before recovering to 3,996 by 1865.Dyer, Men of property and intelligence, 69.
The 1832 general election was a triumph for local Reformers as their candidate Alexander Bannerman, a wine merchant, was returned unopposed. After his canvass he claimed 1,400 pledges of support, which represented two-thirds of the electorate.Aberdeen Journal, 17 Oct. 1832. This compelled his Tory opponent, James Hadden, of Persley, the former lord provost, to withdraw before the nomination.Aberdeen Journal, 3, 24 Oct. 1832, 12 Dec. 1832. Although there was no contest, the novelty of a popular election generated a ‘considerable sensation’. The adaptation of English traditions to Scotland was well-received, one reporter describing the hustings as ‘that far-famed symbol of English liberty’. At the nomination, Bannerman promised to support burgh reform, a low fixed duty on corn and the opening of the East India trade.Aberdeen Journal, 19 Dec. 1832.
After the passing of burgh reform in 1833, the Reformers consolidated their power by winning all 18 seats in the first council elections later that year. One consequence was that the Haddens were supplanted by the Whig Blaikies as the pre-eminent family in local politics. The Blaikies held the lord provostship, 1833-6, 1839-47, 1853-5.Dyer, Men of property and intelligence, 72. However, local Conservatives demonstrated their strength with a dinner for the county MP William Gordon in November 1834 that was attended by over 700 people, including the duke of Gordon, the marquess of Abercorn, the earls of Aberdeen and Aboyne, Viscount Arbuthnott, and Lords Forbes and Saltoun.Aberdeen Journal, 5 Nov. 1834. A Liberal riposte came the following month at a meeting called by Bannerman to declare support for the late Whig ministry that had been dismissed by the king.Aberdeen Journal, 3 Dec. 1834.
At the 1835 general election the Conservatives brought forward Sir Arthur Farquhar, a shipowner and banker, who emphasised his commitment to the established church and constitution, and advocated relief for the shipping interest and protection for agriculture.Aberdeen Observer, qu. in Morning Post, 31 Dec. 1834; Aberdeen Journal, 7, 21 Jan. 1835. Although he favoured shorter parliaments, Bannerman described the ballot as ‘unnecessary’ and was hostile to household suffrage.Aberdeen Journal, 7 Jan. 1835. At the nomination he argued that the Whigs, contrary to the Conservative critique, had actually preserved the constitution by ‘lopping off the old useless branches’.Aberdeen Journal, 21 Jan. 1835.
The Aberdeen Journal had predicted that Farquhar would be ‘supported by a very large portion of the wealth, respectability, and intelligence of the city’, but the contest produced a ‘first-rate majority’ for Bannerman.Aberdeen Journal, 14, 21 Jan. 1835. Bannerman won by a convincing margin in all five polling districts. He secured three-quarters of the vote in wards one, two and three, which encompassed the civic, commercial and industrial heart of the city. Farquhar fared rather better in ward four, a new residential suburb, and ward five, which contained the city’s agricultural hinterland and the Old Town.Dyer, Men of property and intelligence, 70-3.
At the 1835 registration the Conservatives made 100 objections against Liberal electors for non-payment of taxes, of which 33 were sustained.Other objections reflected differences in the Scottish burgh franchise compared to England, for example, that joint-ownership was of insufficient value to qualify for the franchise. Aberdeen Journal, 26 Aug. 1835. Nevertheless before the 1837 general election, the party’s chances were written off as ‘almost hopeless’ by the Conservative agent Donald Horne in his survey of Scottish constituencies for the duke of Buccleuch.Donald Horne, ‘Memorandum’, to duke of Buccleuch, June 1837, qu. in Papers on Scottish electoral politics, 1832-54, ed. J.I. Brash (1972), 241. However, local partisans were eager to oust Bannerman, especially as they were increasingly irked by his votes on religious issues. Bannerman, Alexander Hadden declared, had given ‘his adherence almost indiscriminately to all the worst measures’ of the government, including the proposed abolition of English church rates and Irish church appropriation.Aberdeen Journal, 26 July 1837. Furthermore, Conservatives complained, the Whig government had been dismissive of the Evangelical demand for public money to fund Scottish church extension.Ibid. Bannerman countered that his opponents were cynically making ‘most unworthy’ use of church questions for electoral purposes.Aberdeen Journal, 12 July 1837.
The Conservatives began to organise a campaign on behalf of Horatio Ross, of Rossie, the former MP for Aberdeen burghs and Montrose burghs. The election committee formed to return him included 28 advocates, 30 merchants and 10 manufacturers as well as members of the local gentry and nobility.Aberdeen Journal, 29 June 1837. However, by the time of the 1837 nomination all opposition to Bannerman had collapsed, as Ross was 1,500 miles away in Bohemia.Aberdeen Journal, 1 Aug. 1837. After his return, Bannerman declared with satisfaction that ‘there is no burgh nor county in Scotland where the Tories had less chance of succeeding than in Aberdeen’.Aberdeen Journal, 1 Aug. 1837.
After their farcical campaign the Conservatives intensified their efforts to oust Bannerman, who was reviled as the ‘trumpeter-general in the north’ for the Whig ministry.Morning Post, 29 Sept. 1837. The ideological core of local Conservatism was the defence of the established churches of England, Ireland and Scotland in particular and Protestantism in general. The Kirk was ‘the key-stone to the institutions of the country’.Aberdeen Journal, 31 Oct. 1838. In December 1837 Ross described Voluntaries (as Presbyterian Dissenters were often known in Scotland) as ‘the worst and most dangerous enemies of our Church’.Aberdeen Journal, 27 Dec. 1837. Irish church appropriation was seen as preparing the ‘groundwork for similar attacks on the Churches of England and Scotland’. The government had refused to offer a grant to support Scottish church extension because they were ‘kept in office by a small knot of Papists and Voluntaries’.Aberdeen Journal, 31 Oct. 1838.
The Conservatives became increasingly well-organised in the late 1830s. They made gains at the 1837 council elections and secured a net advantage of 125 at the registration in autumn 1838, shortly before the founding of the Aberdeen Conservative Association.Aberdeen Herald, qu. in The Standard, 16 Nov. 1837; Aberdeen Journal, 31 Oct. 1838. Their opponents later conceded that many of the attendees of the inaugural meeting of the Association had formerly been Reformers, reflecting a drift of opinion towards the Conservatives.Aberdeen Journal, 7 Nov. 1838. However, the party had difficulties in finding a candidate for the next election. For a time, Ross, who visited Aberdeen in December 1837, was the preferred candidate, but by 1839, Sir George Murray, the former MP for Perthshire was favoured, although he declined to come forward. See Horne’s notes, 1 Nov. 1838, 5 Nov. 1838, in Scottish electoral politics, 259; Aberdeen Journal, 17 June 1840. (In 1839 Murray unsuccessfully contested Manchester at a by-election.)
The Liberals were not slow to respond to the Conservative challenge, founding the Aberdeen Reform Association in November 1838 to attend to the registration. At their inaugural meeting, Bannerman denied that Irish church appropriation was tantamount to ‘robbing the church’. He noted with approval that John Knox, the founding father of Scottish Protestantism, had not regarded tithes as a divine right, nor had he considered it sacrilegious to apply to secular purposes revenue originally intended for religious ends.Aberdeen Journal, 7 Nov. 1838. The following year, Bannerman played a leading part in founding the Aberdeen Anti-Corn Law Association, but support for the cause was lacklustre and intermittent compared to other parts of Scotland.K.J. Cameron, ‘Anti-Corn-law agitations in Scotland, with particular reference to the Anti-Corn-Law League’, Univ. of Edinburgh, Ph. D. Thesis (1971), 278, 336.
In the early 1840s Aberdeen politics was increasingly shaped by the dispute within the Church of Scotland between Evangelical and Moderate Churchmen over the patronage question. Evangelicals (also called Non-Instrusionists) opposed the power of patrons to appoint parish ministers, and had used their majority in the General Assembly of the Kirk to pass the 1834 Veto Act. This gave congregations a veto over clerical appointments, but the Act was ruled illegal by the judicial courts in 1839, a verdict considered by many Evangelicals to be an unwarranted civil interference in ecclesiastical matters. The issue eventually led to the Great Disruption, or schism, in the Church of Scotland in May 1843 when Non-Intrusionists seceded to form the Free Church. The issue created difficulties inside both parties.
Within local Liberalism, the issue strained the political alliance between Whig Moderates, often members of the older commercial elite like the Blaikie family, and the new middle class, who in many cases were Evangelicals, and later Free Churchmen.Dyer, Men of property and intelligence, 73-4. In April 1840 Bannerman, who was a Presbyterian Dissenter, addressed a public meeting on the issue. He revealed that the lord advocate, Andrew Rutherfurd, intended to bring forward a government measure that would require the concurrence of congregations for the appointment of parish ministers. Bannerman floated the idea that such a right might be granted to ‘all resident parishioners attending a church’.Aberdeen Journal, 15 Apr. 1840. The proposal was described by the Moderate Aberdeen Journal as an ‘absurd and ridiculous scheme’, and Rutherfurd himself was forced to clarify Bannerman’s account of what the government intended.Ibid.; Caledonian Mercury, 4 May 1840.
Although Dyer has emphasised the problems the Church question caused Liberals, it caused even greater difficulties for the Conservatives.The best account of the political and electoral impact of the issue across Scotland remains I. Hutchison’s indispensable A political history of Scotland, 1832-1924: parties, elections and issues (1986), 15-25, 37-47. Liberals could partly transcend their divisions by appealing for support on the grounds of political reform and free trade, but Conservative party identity was inseparable from the Church. Accordingly, religious divisions between Moderates and Evangelicals were much more damaging for party unity, not least because the latter group believed that the patronage question rendered all party considerations of secondary importance. As a result some Evangelicals were unwilling to support Conservative candidates who did not pledge to support Non-Intrusionist principles. These tensions were exposed by the visit of Hugh Hamilton Lindsay, a London merchant, to canvass Aberdeen in December 1840. He warned local supporters that unless there was unity they should ‘at once abandon all idea of contesting the representation of the city’. His solution was to allow the Kirk to pass a law in the General Assembly that would then be legislated for at Westminster, thereby ending the clash between the spiritual and civil authorities.Aberdeen Journal, 17 Dec. 1840. As the Times recognised, Lindsay’s position was unlikely to satisfy Evangelicals or Moderates.The Times, qu. in The Standard, 25 Dec. 1840. Horne commented of the episode, ‘the Conservatives [are] split on the non-intrusion question and from all I have been able to learn I cannot anticipate his [Lindsay’s] success’.Horne’s note, 9 Dec. 1840, in Scottish electoral politics, 259.
The Liberals made a gain of 200 in the 1840 registration, which, combined with their opponents’ troubles, put them in a strong position at the 1841 general election.Aberdeen Journal, 2 Sept. 1840. Although it was rumoured that Bannerman was to be appointed to various public offices, he stood his ground.Edinburgh Evening Post, qu. in Morning Post, 25 May 1841; Aberdeen Banner, qu. in Morning Chronicle, 27 May 1841. Throughout the election he emphasised his support for free trade and the low fixed duty on corn proposed by the Whig government. He was uncharacteristically reticent on the Church issue, however, and his stance has been criticised by Dyer as a ‘fudge’.Dyer, Men of property and intelligence, 74. In truth, Scottish Liberals like Bannerman had little incentive to take a strong public position on the patronage question as the bitter divisions the issue created among Conservatives were very much to their electoral advantage. There were also risks for Bannerman in going beyond the proposal he had outlined in 1840. Firstly, there was the danger of alienating Dissenters if he appeared too favourable to the Evangelical Churchmen.Hutchison, Political history of Scotland, 43-4. Secondly, regardless of their attitude towards the patronage issue, many of the city’s civic, business and legal elite disapproved of the increasing militancy of the Evangelical majority on the General Assembly. At a public meeting chaired by the lord provost, which was described as ‘the most numerous, respectable, and influential ever witnessed in this City’, local notables queued up to condemn, in ripe language, the General Assembly’s dismissal of seven church ministers from Strathbogie for obeying rather than ignoring the courts’ ruling regarding the Veto Act.Aberdeen Journal, 9 June 1841. The majority on the General Assembly wanted the ministers to uphold the Veto Act and ignore the ruling of the judicial courts. The Assembly thereby challenged the supremacy of the judicial courts in spiritual affairs.
Whatever faint hopes the Conservatives had of ousting Bannerman were fatally undermined by the Church issue. Their candidate, William Innes of Raemoir, a local laird, opposed the pretensions of the Non-Intrusionists, which led a section of local Conservatives to pass a motion of no confidence in him. His position, they declared, ‘must utterly preclude’ them from voting for him. They conceded that ‘the division which they thus create among Conservatives will render Mr Innes’ chances of election utterly hopeless’.Aberdeen Journal, 30 June 1841. On the corn laws, Innes affirmed his support for the current sliding scale, although he was not opposed to a modest revision.
The nomination was notable for the presence of a Chartist candidate Robert Lowery, from north-east England. Bannerman restated his free trade views and, side-stepping a Conservative trap, declined to identify with either side of the Church dispute. Lowery’s eloquent speech noted that the ‘monopoly’ of corn sprang from ‘monopoly of legislation’ created by the restricted franchise.Aberdeen Journal, 7 July 1841. Lowery won the show of hands convincingly, but received only 30 votes in the poll, which Bannerman won easily by 260 votes ahead of Innes. Lord Aberdeen estimated that 75 Conservative Non-Intrusionists voted for Bannerman.Lord Aberdeen to John Hope, 11 July 1841, Add. 43205, f. 121. Bannerman, the peer reflected, ‘had played a very dextrous game’.Ibid.
The election revealed the unravelling of the clear partisan alignment of the previous decade, a development already apparent at the municipal level. In 1839 there had been a rapprochement between Whig and Conservative Moderates, led respectively by the Blaikie and Hadden families. They created a broad alliance, spanning the ‘religious spectrum from Tory Episcopalians to Liberal voluntaries’, to exclude the Non-Intrusionists, and later Free Churchmen, from municipal power.Dyer, Men of property and intelligence, 75-6. The Free Church party’s impotence in municipal politics poorly reflected their local support, as their adherents probably formed the largest portion of the electorate.Ibid., 76.
Although opposition to the 1845 Maynooth college bill threatened to create a new alignment between Dissenters and Free Churchmen, the proposed municipal improvement plan of 1846-7 proved to be more important in shaping the political terrain of the next decade.Aberdeen Journal, 21 May 1845. The plan, which included municipalisation of the gas company, was controversial not least because its architects, the Blaikie and Hadden families, ‘drew little distinction between their own private ambitions and the public interests’.Dyer, Men of property and intelligence, 74-5. Although opposition to the scheme came from a number of quarters, it was no coincidence that Free Churchmen, led by Alexander Dingwall Fordyce, of Brucklay, were its leading opponents.Ibid., 76.
Bannerman unexpectedly retired at the 1847 general election, leaving the contest to be fought out between two Liberals: Fordyce and William Henry Sykes, an English East India merchant brought forward by the Blaikie and Hadden families with the endorsement of Adam’s Aberdeen Herald.Ibid., 76; Aberdeen Journal, 30 June 1847. The candidates agreed on free trade and promoting popular education, but differed on religious issues. Sykes was endorsed by a meeting of Conservative electors as an Anglican who would be a reliable defender of church establishments, a view echoed by the lord provost, Thomas Blaikie, at a Liberal meeting.Aberdeen Journal, 28 July 1847. Sykes himself told Fordyce at a meeting that there was a ‘gulf between them’: as an Anglican he would uphold the established churches because they were ‘part and parcel of the law of the land’.Aberdeen Journal, 4 Aug. 1847. Fordyce opposed any further state endowments of religion, argued that the Irish church was ‘ripe for a change’, and in reply to one question declared, ‘I think the bishops altogether out of place in the House of Lords’.Ibid.
There were, however, a range of other important local issues. Fordyce supported the repeal of Peel’s unpopular 1844-5 reforms of the Scottish banking system, while Sykes defended the navigation laws as the ‘nursery of our Navy’.Aberdeen Journal, 28 July 1847. At the nomination, Fordyce was attacked by Sykes’s proposers, Thomas Blaikie and James Hadden as the ‘bitterest opponent’ of the improvement scheme and the leader of the ‘do-nothings’. Furthermore, Hadden warned that a Fordyce victory would turn Aberdeen into ‘a pocket burgh of the Free Church’. The third candidate, James McPherson, a local Chartist, spoke on the hustings but did not go to the poll after winning the show of hands.Aberdeen Journal, 4 Aug. 1847.
Fordyce won an easy victory in the poll and was supported by a motley coalition of Free Churchmen, Dissenters, Tory anti-improvers and even some Chartists.Dyer, Men of property and intelligence, 76. Dyer’s voting analysis has indicated there was little continuity with the 1841 contest. For example, of the 233 electors who voted for Innes who were still on the register, 66 voted for Fordyce, 79 for Sykes and 88 did not vote.Ibid., 78. The election created a new alignment that can be understood in social and religious terms. The Disruption in Aberdeen has been explained sociologically as a revolt of new, dynamic middle-class entrepreneurs against the old commercial elite.A.A. MacLaren, Religion and social class: the Disruption years in Aberdeen (1974). In this respect, Fordyce’s victory represented a repudiation of the political families, both Conservative and Whig, who had long been influential in the city.Dyer, Men of property and intelligence, 74. This change was symbolised by Blaikie’s subsequent retirement from the town council after the election and the instalment of George Thompson junior, a Free Churchman, as lord provost.Ibid., 78.
When Fordyce retired at the 1852 general election, his supporters put up the reluctant Thompson as their candidate.Aberdeen Journal, 18, 25 Feb. 1852. His opponent was Sir Andrew Leith Hay, former Whig MP for Elgin burghs, who argued that the shipping interest required relief.Aberdeen, 10 Mar. 1852. This was a point of difference from Thompson, a wealthy ship-owner who had long supported the repeal of the navigation laws.Aberdeen Journal, 3 Mar. 1852. Thompson favoured a national system of secular education and criticised Peel’s 1844 Bank Charter Act, which Hay defended as a check on the reckless issue of banknotes. Although he was not against some political reform, Hay’s resolute opposition to universal suffrage led the newly formed Aberdeen Reform Association to endorse his rival.Aberdeen Journal, 24 Mar. 1852. At their meeting, Conservative electors complained that free trade without reciprocity had been injurious, but could not agree on which Liberal candidate to endorse.Aberdeen Journal, 21 Apr. 1852.
The contest later ‘assumed a very unpleasant character’.Aberdeen Journal, 7 July 1852. Hay described Thompson as having ‘extreme views which would lead to universal anarchy’ after the ship-owner voiced support for a £5 burgh franchise.Aberdeen Journal, 12 May 1852. Thompson’s supporters later circulated a rumour that Hay had been declared bankrupt and so was ineligible to sit in Parliament.Aberdeen Journal, 7 July 1852. At the nomination Thompson’s party made much of his local and commercial credentials, while Hay’s proposers, including Blaikie, emphasised his parliamentary experience. Hay favoured free trade but insisted that ‘we have a right to demand reciprocity’. Hay spoke against legislation to enforce a strict observation of the Sabbath, unlike Thompson, who also opposed the Maynooth grant and all religious endowments. Thompson won the show of hands and the poll by 204 votes, although the turnout was lower than in 1841 or 1847.Aberdeen Journal, 14 July 1852. Thompson relied heavily on Free Church support, with the elders of that denomination dividing in his favour by 135 votes to 14.Dyer, Men of property and intelligence, 80. However, the election was notable for a ‘considerable diminution’ of the ‘religious antagonism’ that had shaped the previous two contests.Aberdeen Journal, 14 July 1852.
By the 1857 general election the relatively clear alignment of the previous decade had dissolved, ensuring a confusing election in which a number of Liberals vied for representation. Despite the best efforts of his supporters to persuade him to stand again, Thompson retired citing his failing health.Aberdeen Journal, 11, 18 Mar. 1857. No fewer than five Liberal candidates were spoken of. Arthur Gordon, former MP for Beverley and son of Lord Aberdeen, opted to contest Liskeard, while Thomas Todd, of Maryculter, a local manufacturer, withdrew after failing to secure the anticipated support.Aberdeen Journal, 11, 18 Mar. 1857. Sir Andrew Leith Hay also abandoned his campaign shortly after entering the field.Aberdeen Journal, 18 Mar. 1857. This left a straight fight between two candidates: William Henry Sykes and John Farley Leith, a barrister and professor of law at Haileybury college. Although Leith was a native of Aberdeen he had spent little time in the city since graduating over thirty years before. Neither candidate, therefore, had strong local credentials, although Sykes had served as lord rector of Marischal College in 1854.Ibid.
During the campaign both candidates declared support for lowering the burgh and county franchises and increasing Scotland’s representation in Parliament.Aberdeen Journal, 1 Apr. 1857. Both described themselves as Palmerstonians, and Sykes, who was chairman of the East India Company, strongly approved of the bombardment of Canton. During the campaign Dissenters, claiming to represent a bloc of 150-250 votes, met and questioned both candidates. It was to this constituency that Leith appealed with his opposition to the Maynooth grant and condemnation of the EIC’s involvement in the Chinese opium trade.Aberdeen Journal, 18, 25 Mar. 1857. Sykes was ‘unquestionably, the popular candidate’. Unlike in 1847, Sykes secured the support of many Free Churchmen, including Thompson, even though he defended the Maynooth grant on pragmatic grounds, arguing that otherwise Irish Catholic priests would be trained in Italy or elsewhere, and that it was necessary to secure ‘order and quiet’ in Ireland.Aberdeen Journal, 25 Mar. 1857. Sykes also opposed the proposed union between Marischal and King’s colleges, which Leith supported as the best way to protect them as separate institutions.Ibid.
Sykes won a closely fought contest by 186 votes. Leith was backed by a diverse coalition including Free Church clergy, the Blaikie and Hadden families and John MacPherson, the local Chartist. Sykes, however, was supported by the Free Church laity including influential businessmen like Thompson.Dyer, Men of property and intelligence, 82. As Dyer has reflected, the election revealed the disintegration of old alliances rather than the emergence of any new alignment.Ibid., 86.
Sykes was returned unopposed at the 1859 and 1865 general elections. His unsuccessful defence of the independence of Marischal college was popular on the former occasion.Aberdeen Journal, 13, 20, 27 Apr. 1859, 4 May 1859. In 1865 Sykes’ return was so much of a formality that proceedings on the hustings lasted ‘scarcely half an hour’.Aberdeen Journal, 19 July 1865.
As one of Scotland’s four largest cities, Aberdeen’s electoral history sheds important light on the similarities and differences between Scottish and English political culture and development in this period. Between 1832 and 1841, clear partisan dividing lines emerged, between Liberal (or Reformers) who advocated free trade and reform and Conservatives who rallied around a defence of the established churches of England, Ireland and Scotland in particular, and Protestantism in general. This was a political trajectory familiar to many constituencies, north and south of the border, in this period. After 1841 the Conservative party was reduced to impotence and the Liberal party to factionalism. Humiliatingly, Conservative participation was reduced to holding public meetings of their supporters to decide on which Liberal candidate to endorse, imitating the politics of electoral pressure long practised by various religious factions in the city. Accordingly, contests were between Liberals and reflected religious divisions.
Sykes was again returned unopposed in 1868 after the Representation of the People Act (Scotland) increased the electorate to 8,312. On Sykes’s death in 1872, Leith was elected after defeating another Liberal and a Conservative.McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), 2-3. In 1885 the city was split into northern and southern divisions. Despite opposition from Liberal Unionists, Conservatives and Labour, the two constituencies, like much of north-eastern Scotland, remained in the hands of the Liberals during the late Victorian and Edwardian periods.Ibid., pt. II, p. 2.
