Economic and social profile:
A small and irregularly built town on the Dorset coast, with an artificial harbour or ‘Cobb’ that served as a port of refuge for boats escaping bad weather, Lyme Regis had become a well-established seaside resort by 1832. Difficult to access, owing to steep surrounding hills, its local economy was almost entirely centred around the accommodation of summer visitors in its many ‘well-furnished lodging houses’ and the servicing of seasonal homes for its fashionable élite. Fossil hunting, inspired by the extraordinary dinosaur discoveries of the pioneering palaeontologist Mary Anning (1799-1847), provided another source of revenue, centred around supplying Anning’s dedicated shop in the high street.Pigot and Co’s Directory (1842), ii. 17; S. Lewis, Topographical Dictionary of England (1844), iii. 192. The same geology also supported stone working. ‘Lyme cloth’, a dense wool used in great coats, was spun from its hillside flocks and there was work to be had making sail cloth.C. Dod, Electoral Facts 1832-52 (1853), 198. Out of season, however, the town was often ‘nearly empty’ and had the ‘appearance of a poor and inconsiderable place’.PP 1831-2 (141), xxxviii. 141. Improvements were badly needed, especially to its principal narrow street, which by 1835 had become so ‘dangerous to foot passengers’ that it had to be ‘stopped up’.PP 1835 (116), xxiv. 1315.
Despite its small size the town was home to a thriving Dissenting community of Baptists, Wesleyans and Independents. There was even a Catholic congregation to rival the Anglican establishment, the incumbency of which lay in the gift of Lord Westmorland, the town’s unreformed patron, who also controlled the local Tory corporation.Parliamentary Gazetteer (1844), iii. 321; Pigot and Co’s Directory (1842), ii. 17; PP 1835 (116), xxiv. 1306-7. Various schemes began to be mooted for connecting the resort with the London and South Western Railway during this period, in a bid to improve the town’s ailing economy, but it was not until 1903 that a branch line was eventually constructed. Before then, from around 1860, a horse-driven bus service transported passengers the six miles to the nearest station at Axminster.C. Maggs and P. Paye, The Sidmouth, Seaton and Lyme Regis branches (1977), 45.
Electoral history:
Lyme Regis has received little attention from historians of Victorian politics, beyond a passing reference by Gash, who noted how the 1832 Reform Act ended its status as a ‘proprietary borough’ under the control of the Fane family (earls of Westmorland).N. Gash, Politics in the Age of Peel (1953), 204-5. This is surprising because it not only acquired contemporary notoriety for endemic corruption, on a scale to rival even Sudbury and St. Albans, but also as one of the most ill-conceived constituencies of the period, whose escape from total disfranchisement in 1832 came to be regarded by its inhabitants as ‘a curse rather than a blessing’.The Times, 9 Mar. 1852. Deprived of only one of its two seats by the Reform Act, on the grounds of wildly inaccurate predictions about its population and electorate, its flaws as a constituency soon became apparent. The widespread practice of letting out seaside houses to tourists during the summer, in particular, meant that many of its new electors regularly fell foul of the Reform Act’s strict residency requirements, not least the necessity for voters to maintain ‘the same qualification’.2 Will. IV, c. 45, pp. 738-9, clause 58. Dubious practices designed to circumvent this issue were soon being widely adopted, fuelling a culture of corruption which was easily exploited by wealthy candidates. Sensing the opportunities for securing long-term control, it was not long before the borough became a battleground for rival borough-mongers, whose money became ‘all powerful’ in deciding electoral outcomes.Dod, Electoral Facts, 198. Their increasingly bitter election contests and legal battles on petition not only severely tested various aspects of the reformed electoral system, but also ended up making the town ‘one of the most miserable’ and ‘delinquent’ boroughs ‘in the country’.Hansard, 1 Apr. 1852, vol. 120, c. 526; Morning Chronicle, 24 Oct. 1848.
At the 1832 election three candidates stood for the single seat, prompting the borough’s first contest for half a century. This ‘novel event’ had not initially been expected.Sherborne Mercury, 2 Dec. 1832. The high level of pro-reform sentiment in the borough, exhibited at town meetings and in petitions to parliament, had made the return of a reformer appear inevitable. The prospects for the Tory Fane family, with the franchise opened up to all £10 householders, seemed hopeless - just 14 of the freemen in their corporation retained their voting qualifications after 1832.PP 1833 (189), xxvii. 155. A split in the reform ranks, however, provided the Fanes with an opportunity they could not pass up.
Following a recommendation by the veteran radical Joseph Hume MP, in June 1831 the town’s more advanced reformers had adopted John Melville of Upper Harley Street, London, an East India merchant, as their next candidate. Shortly afterwards, however, William Pinney of Somerton Erle, Somerset, whose wealthy father John F. Pinney had just purchased a ‘grand house’ in the town, had announced his intention to stand, also as a reformer.S. Emling, The Fossil Hunter (2009), 148. Despite numerous attempts to find a solution, both sides refused to give way, leading to increasingly bitter divisions between the town’s radical and more moderate reformers.HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 329. Coupled with this the number of £10 householders who actually enrolled at the 1832 registration was much lower than anticipated – the boundary commissions had predicted that with the inclusion of neighbouring Charmouth, 367 £10 householders would be mustered, placing it well above their minimum electorate of 300.PP 1831-2 (141), xxxviii. 141-2. In the event, however, just 212 (barely three-fifths) made it on to the registers, making Lyme Regis the eighth smallest English borough and far more vulnerable to electoral control than had been envisaged.P. Salmon, Electoral Reform at Work (2011), 259. In an inexplicable error, HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 329 gives the number of registered electors as 836.
One key reason for Lyme’s stunted electorate, completely overlooked by the commissioners but crucial to its subsequent electoral history, was the unusually high level of residential mobility associated with the town’s seaside economy. Many householders rented out rooms to holiday-makers during the summer months. Some entirely vacated their premises, often on the instructions of a landlord, and moved into temporary accommodation further inland.PP 1842 (285), vi. 1-237. Both types of arrangement risked contravening the 1832 Reform Act’s stringent residency and rating requirements, most notably those concerning possession of a property with a sufficient value and occupation of the same premises.See 2 Will. IV, c. 45, p. 729, clause 27; HP Commons, 1820-32, i. 379. Even when successfully registered, another complication arose. Under section 58 of the Reform Act electors had to swear an oath that they possessed the same qualification as ‘originally inserted in the register’ before being allowed to poll.2 Will. IV c. 45, p. 739, clause 58. The special difficulties this created in Lyme Regis were not immediately apparent in 1832, owing to that year’s election being held fairly soon after the registration. But in later years, when the length of time between registration and elections was greater, it became a significant issue.
The residential clauses of the Reform Act not only severely restricted the size of Lyme Regis’s post-reform electorate, but also helped the Fane family justify their staunch opposition to the reform bill during the 1832 election campaign. Bringing forward their most senior member, the diplomat and heir to the earldom Lord Burghersh, who had previously represented the borough from 1806-1816, the Fanes launched a scathing attack on the Whig measure, addressed to the ‘new-fangled borough of Lyme Regis, alias LYME GREGIS’. As well as disfranchising many of the borough’s freemen and abolishing its second seat, they protested
making a resident occupier of a £10 house – ‘a mere bird of passage’ – an elector, whilst the non-resident freeholder, however, large his property, remains still disfranchised, is one of the ... most fatal and democratical innovations which could have been devised, either by ignorance or treachery.Dorset County Chronicle, 6 Dec. 1832.
The ensuing three-way contest between Burghersh and the two rival reformers was close and venal from the outset, judging by the repeated calls for voters ‘to not lose their soul’. In an important reminder of where the ultimate power often lay in such matters, one observer reported seeing ‘electioneering practices, such as cajoling, flattering and wheedling, if not succeeding with the men, coaxing the wives’. Melville, backed by the radical MP Henry Warburton, was the better connected of the reformers, but it soon became clear that he lacked Pinney’s financial clout. On the hustings Pinney’s backers deftly alluded to his ability to fund repairs to the sea walls, something the unreformed corporation, controlled by the Fanes, had long ignored. They also noted how Pinney’s ‘upright and conscientious’ uncle William Dickinson MP had represented Somerset for 35 years before retiring in 1831. The fact that he had sat as a Tory was eagerly seized upon by Melville’s radical supporters. Rather than damaging Pinney, however, this only helped him to attract the backing of Conservative-minded voters alarmed at the prospect of handing the representation back to the Fanes. Following the close of the poll, which was held in bathing rooms known as Jefferd’s Baths, Pinney was returned in first place with a 19 vote lead over Burghesh.Dorset County Chronicle, 20 Dec. 1832.
Pinney’s performance in Parliament, including his support for the Whig ministry’s controversial new poor law, did little to endear him to the town’s more radical elements, but at a dinner held for 140 reformers in the Lion Inn shortly after the 1834 dissolution, he solicited and secured their undivided support.Western Times, 20 Dec. 1834. His appeal was undoubtedly aided by his family’s acquisition of another ‘splendid mansion’ in the town, formerly occupied by the Countess Dowager Poulett, which effectively made his father the town’s leading proprietor.Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 1 Dec. 1834. He also followed up with an address promising to oppose the newly appointed Peel ministry.Parliamentary Test book (1835), 128. At the ensuing 1835 election Burghersh initially went through the motions of mounting another challenge, again assisted by the corporation, which was now facing possible extinction as a result of the inquiry being conducted into England’s municipal corporations. In the event, however, he declined a poll, leaving Pinney to be re-elected unopposed.PP 1842 (285), vi. 231.
Later that year the Tory corporation attracted national attention for its apparent attempt to thwart the implementation of the Whig ministry’s Municipal Reform Act.See, for instance, The Times, 26 Nov. 1835. By failing to swear in their last mayor, William Hingeston, the corporation risked becoming extinct ‘before their time’, making any transfer of power and the construction of a newly elected council impossible as described in section 38 of the measure.Norfolk Chronicle, 5 Dec. 1835; 5 & 6 Will. IV, c. 76, p. 1020. As the press noted, boroughs which had neglected to take such proceedings would be ‘shut out from the benefits of the municipal reform bill, until such time as they can either be resuscitated by a fresh charter or an act of Parliament’.Western Times, 5 Dec. 1835. After repeated attempts to get the mayor sworn in came to nothing, Lyme’s local reformers seized the initiative by applying successfully to King’s bench for a writ of mandamus, forcing the outgoing mayor to take the oath at a special court leet. The new town council elections that followed resulted in a complete ‘triumph’ for the Liberals, who secured all 12 councillors, nine of whom were Dissenters.Morning Post, 2 Jan. 1836.
The destruction of the old Tory corporation ended any remaining influence exercised by the Fane family and with it their interest in the borough. At the same time, however, the Dissenting community, who had now assumed the reins of local government, needed to be taken far more seriously by any Liberal hoping to secure re-election. Pinney’s increasing support for key Dissenting issues, such as the abolition of church rates, therefore came as no surprise. But this inevitably ‘alienated’ many of the Conservative-minded electors who had been ‘complacent’ about opposing him in previous elections.Dorset County Chronicle, 27 July 1837.
With so few electors and the borough’s former patron out of the way, Lyme Regis now became an obvious target for Tory candidates supplied with money. The first to try his hand, at the 1837 election, was Renn Hampden of Little Marlow, Buckinghamshire, a wealthy West India proprietor who was reputedly ‘sent down by the Carlton Club’.Western Times, 29 July 1837. His rants against Popery cut little ice, however, as did his high-minded hectoring on discovering the extent to which he was being outspent:
Fellow Protestants, consider before it is too late whether you will be able in the presence of Jesus the Lord God to justify your conduct in returning Mr Pinney ... or whether you had not much better break a promise made to Mr Pinney than forfeit your promise of allegiance to Christ.Western Times, 22 July 1837.
What really scuppered Hampden’s campaign, however, was a handbill circulated by the Liberals accusing him of ‘unspeakable barbarisms’ and the ‘flogging of women’ on his slave plantations in Barbados. Worse still, he had apparently written a pamphlet recommending ‘in plain terms the flogging of women’. At the hustings, which became ‘more a trial than a nomination’, he emphatically denied all the charges, but was forced to admit that he had ‘deprecated abrupt changes ... including the discontinuance of punishments of negroes’ whilst serving on the Barbados council.Dorset County Chronicle, 27 July 1837. The irony of a ‘ferocious’ anti-slavery campaign being waged by Pinney, whose family wealth was derived entirely from slave ownership, was evidently entirely lost on Lyme’s electors, who duly re-elected him with a 34 vote majority.N. Draper, The price of emancipation (2010), 159.
In the run up to the 1841 election it initially seemed doubtful that a more suitable Tory would be found to challenge Pinney.PP 1842 (285), vi. 248; Exeter Gazette, 17 July 1841. A requisition to Sir Dudley St. Ledger Hill, a former governor of St. Lucia residing in the town, came to nothing, and although the ludicrously named Spencer Horsey de Horsey, who had sat for Newcastle-under-Lyme from 1837-41, was persuaded to appear, he ‘made a speech, canvassed and bolted all within the space of three hours’.Dorset County Chronicle, 10 June 1841; Taunton Courier, 30 June 1841. A walkover for Pinney, who it was claimed ‘boasts of having the electors locked up in his purse’, seemed inevitable. ‘At the last hour’, however, Thomas Hussey, the eldest son of John Hussey, a former mayor and capital burgess of the unreformed corporation, agreed to stand as a Protectionist candidate, following a public declaration of support signed by 59 electors.Exeter Gazette, 3 July 1841; PP 1835 (116), xxiv. 1306; PP 1842 (285), vi. 248.
The ensuing contest, ‘the closest ever known to have taken place’, made Lyme Regis one of the most talked about boroughs of the period, not only because of the amount of endemic corruption that came to light, but also because of the extraordinary intrigues surrounding the subsequent election petition.Exeter Gazette, 17 July 1841. Campaigning under the banner of ‘Hussey and Independency’, the Tories won the show of hands by a clear margin at the hustings and polled just 13 votes less than Pinney, many of whose votes were considered to be ‘bad’ owing to that summer’s seaside lettings.Ibid. A petition questioning the validity of certain votes was duly presented on behalf of Hussey, 7 Sept. 1841, and was considered by an election committee for 17 days during May 1842.Hansard, 7 Sept. 1841, vol. 59, c. 500.
Two practices, in particular, dominated the inquiry. The first, which led to Pinney being unseated and Hussey returned in his place, involved electors who had moved out of qualifying premises being given back their keys by their landlords on election day, and presenting them as proof of occupation at the poll. This system of ‘exchanging keys’, which had become customary and usually involved the electors’ wives, affected sufficient numbers of Pinney’s voters for him to lose his majority.PP 1842 (285), 3, 270 and passim. The second feature was summed up by the committee as follows:
A corrupt practice has for some years prevailed in the borough of Lyme, of lending money upon notes of hand, bills of sale or other securities to a considerable portion of [the] constituency ... a practice so insidiously corrupting and demoralising ... that it deserves serious attention and inquiry on the part of the House.PP 1842 (285), vi. p. xviii.
The loans referred to had been widely distributed by the agents of Pinney’s father, usually by settling an elector’s written debts or outstanding bills, which were then retained as sureties for an indefinite period. On the father’s instructions, any elector who polled against Pinney was later sued for the original bills plus costs. Amounts varied, but loans of £30 were not uncommon. In addition large numbers of voters had been entertained ‘with anything they called for, wine, grog or beer’ at Pinney’s expense, whilst some men were discovered to have received a new horse or payments of ‘ten gold sovereigns’.Ibid. 222, 229, 231, 280, 291. Under this system, a large portion of the constituency had become indebted either to the Pinneys, or to someone else willing to assume their financial liabilities. It was not long before the identity of the rival moneylender emerged.
Following Pinney’s unseating, it became clear that Lyme Regis had for some time been receiving the ‘special attentions’ of the notorious Victorian boroughmonger John Attwood, Conservative MP for Harwich.For further details of his activities see Morning Chronicle, 4 Nov. 1843; Sherborne Mercury, 25 May 1844 and Dorset County Chronicle, 9 Jan. 1845. Attwood’s activities had undoubtedly included taking over electors’ debts, enabling them to poll for Hussey, rather than for Pinney. It was not until 1845, however, that the full extent of his ambitions in the constituency became apparent. On 30 May 1845 a sensational letter appeared in the Whig Morning Chronicle under the heading ‘MAKING A CLOSE BOROUGH’, in which it was alleged that Attwood had not only helped to finance Hussey’s campaign, but had also bankrolled the entire cost of the petition, which ‘amounted to nearly £9,000’.Morning Chronicle, 30 May 1845; The Times, 8 Mar. 1848. This ‘boroughmongering speculator’, the letter claimed, was ‘seeking to obtain a peerage’ by ‘recreating a number of close boroughs’, which he would then place at the disposal of ministers. Legal papers apparently seen ‘at the time’ showed that Hussey had agreed to vacate the seat if it was needed for Attwood’s nominee, though this had yet to be ‘acted on’. Moreover, in order to completely ‘enslave the borough’ Attwood had been preparing an improvement bill amending the town’s layout following a damaging fire, for which £12,000 was to be lent by him at 2%, with power to demand full repayment out of the rates at six months’ notice. ‘The design’, concluded the writer, ‘is obvious’.Morning Chronicle, 30 May 1845.
Despite these allegations, and the inhabitants and Liberal town council presenting a series of petitions against the bill, Attwood’s private act ‘for making two new streets with improvements and waterworks’ passed both houses and reached the statute book, 21 July 1845.CJ (1845), c. 111, 303, 310, 319, 335, 766. The extent to which it tightened Attwood’s hold over the borough was soon put to the test at the 1847 election, when Pinney declined to stand again, opting to try and resurrect his career elsewhere. Two candidates, both ‘strangers to the borough’, initially offered to take his place as Liberals, Thomas Neville Abdy of Albyns, Essex and Edmund Batton of the chancery bar. A local resident, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Henry Bayly also came forward as some sort of ‘independent’, but following the arrival of Sir Fitzroy Kelly, the attorney-general in Peel’s late ministry, both he and Batton quit the field.Dorset County Chronicle, 1, 8 July 1847.
The ensuing contest between Abdy, who received support from Pinney, and Kelly, who emphatically ‘declared himself to be no nominee of Mr Attwood’, resulted in the return of Abdy by just three votes, one of the slimmest margins at this general election. With widespread bribery being reported and residency problems again arising from a summer poll, a petition was again inevitable.Manchester Courier, 21 July 1847; Morning Post, 31 July 1847.
The 1847 petition marked another turning point in Lyme’s electoral history, though its outcome was not the one that Kelly’s supporters had hoped for. Presented on 2 Dec. 1847, its central allegation was that ‘divers persons’ had been permitted to vote for Abdy, ‘who did not at the time of their so voting reside within the said borough, or within the said distance so required by law’.CJ (1847-8) ciii. 38-39. When the committee began its deliberations the following year it seemed likely Abdy would suffer the same fate as Pinney and for the same reasons – residential mobility. Following revelations about Attwood’s involvement, however, it became increasingly clear that the petitioners were ‘merely stalking-horses or mouthpieces for the great boroughmonger, who was the prime mover in these proceedings’. On the fourteenth day of the inquiry Abdy’s QC moved for the dismissal of the entire petition, arguing that since that Attwood was funding all the expenses of the named petitioners, the petition was ‘was not bona fide’. Attwood was then issued with a summons to attend and give evidence, being ‘virtually the petitioner in this case’, but before he could be examined, Kelly’s lawyers withdrew the petition, ending the hearing. The committee had no choice but to declare Abdy duly elected.The Times, 17 Feb. 1848, 9 Mar. 1852. In their report to the Commons, however, they urged the necessity for ‘immediate’ action, noting how Attwood had since 1842 been ‘granting loans of money on property to voters’ on condition that they support his nominees, and had ‘set on foot’ both the 1842 and 1847 petitions. ‘Such transactions’, they concluded, ‘operate as a grievous snare to the voter and totally destroy all freedom of election’.CJ (1847-8), ciii. 300; The Times, 4, 6, 8 Mar. 1848
Keen to stimulate some form of response, on 4 Apr. 1848 Abdy presented a petition from Lyme calling for an inquiry and the prosecution of Attwood.CJ (1847-8), ciii. 419; The Times, 5 Apr. 1848. Ten days later the veteran radical Joseph Hume moved for the Whig attorney-general to prosecute, citing the committee’s report, only to be advised that since Attwood had not been a candidate a case could not pursued.The Times, 15 Apr. 1848. Instead, over the ensuing months the Commons focussed its attention on Harwich, where Attwood had been unseated for similar practices on 23 Mar. 1848, prompting calls for that borough’s disfranchisement.Hansard, 23 Mar. 1848, vol. 97, c. 898.
Lyme therefore escaped further scrutiny, but given the reputation it had acquired it now became something of an electoral liability. Unable to attract the sort of political patronage it had increasingly come to rely on, owing to its place in the public spotlight, and plagued by high levels of personal and public debt, it began to fall into rapid decline. By 1852, as one MP explained in the Commons, it had become ‘one of the miserable places in the country, with its population pauperised and its town in ruins, and all this in consequence of these practices of corruption at the elections’.Sir De Lacy Evans: Hansard, 1 Apr. 1852, vol. 120, c. 526. As a local observer informed The Times:
Before the reform bill our inhabitants were prosperous, our tradesmen rich, and the best and kindliest feelings prevailed among all ranks of our little community. The reform bill passed and the borough was placed in schedule B. From this moment a blight has rested on it ... Political contests have so divided the little town into two bitter hostile parties, and have produced such an amount of ill-will and almost hatred ... that several most respectable families have left the place ... and houses that a short time since let at £60 or £70 per annum are not tenanted, though offered now at the most destructive rent of £20 ... A venerable clergyman ... who has carefully watched and noted the effects of these political contests and the nefarious means resorted to for the purpose of influencing them ... assured me, with tears in his eyes ... that it would be blessing to the town ... if the place were disfranchised.The Times, 20 Feb., 9 Mar. 1852.
Not surprisingly, many of the subsequent reform bills of this period marked Lyme out for disfranchisement, underpinning the perception that the constituency was operating on borrowed time.In Russell’s abortive reform bill of 1854, for instance, Lyme Regis was one of 19 boroughs scheduled for complete abolition: The Times, 24 Feb. 1854.
Some attempt was made to rehabilitate the borough’s reputation at the 1852 election, when Abdy retired and Pinney was invited to offer again, ‘free of every expense’.Western Times, 19 June, 17 July 1852. His arrival in the town was widely celebrated at festivities and parades, and with no sense of irony the Liberals lauded him as ‘the man who would throw off the influence of Mr Attwood the boroughmonger’. Another landed proprietor in the neighbourhood, John Tatchell Bullen of Sydling House, had initially offered as an ‘independent’ free trader, but once it became clear that Sir Phipps Hornby, a naval lord of the admiralty in the Derby ministry, also intended to stand, he withdrew. The ensuing contest between Pinney, a free trader, and Hornby, a Protectionist, resulted in Pinney’s return by a clear margin of 17 votes.Dorset County Chronicle, 22, 24 June, 8 July 1852.
Pinney’s hold over Lyme now looked set to become ‘as secure as its cobb’.Dorset County Chronicle, 19 Mar. 1857. At the 1857 election he obtained an overwhelming 91 vote majority over his rival Sir Thomas George Hesketh of Rufford Hall, Lancashire, whose candidature had been announced by ‘telegraphic message’ from the Carlton Club following the flight of three London-based candidates.These were: O’Kelly Templar, W. Elers and R. G. Chidley: Sherborne Mercury, 24, 31 Mar. 1857. Pinney’s vote against the Derby ministry’s reform bill, which had ‘sacredly respected the ancient rights and privileges of Lyme Regis’, however, lost him considerable local support in March 1859, and at a ‘numerously attended public meeting’ the following month he was charged with having placed ‘the franchise of this ancient borough of Lyme’ in jeopardy by supporting Russell’s opposition motion for a more extensive plan of reform.The Times, 12, 21 Apr. 1859. A London property developer John Wright Treeby offered to stand as a Conservative against him, and at the ensuing 1859 election Lyme apparently reverted to type, with ‘bribery, treating and intimidation’ being used ‘most unsparingly’ and ‘a large number of navvies’ being ‘brought in from Axminster’.The Times, 3 May 1859.
Another appeal to the Commons along familiar lines seemed inevitable. In the event, however, it was not bribery, but the ‘spirit of partisanship’ displayed by the Liberal mayor Frederick Hinton that formed the basis of Lyme’s last election petition. At the close of the poll both Pinney and Treeby had secured 115 votes. Rather than making a double return, however, the mayor, who was the returning officer, controversially allowed a reluctant voter to record a casting vote for Pinney, apparently (or so he later claimed) because he believed his watch was running fast.The Times, 5 May 1859. A petition complaining of the mayor’s conduct was duly presented to the Commons, 21 June 1859.The Times, 22 June 1859; CJ (1859), cxiv. 223; (1860-1), cxv. 70. At the same time Treeby took the highly unusual step of bringing a private criminal prosecution against the mayor. The potential conflicts over jurisdiction this created proved too much even for Lord Campbell, who in one of his last sittings at Queen’s bench before becoming lord chancellor deferred the case until the outcome of the petition was known.Morning Chronicle, 30 May 1859. Fortunately for Pinney, on 14 Feb. 1860 the petition was abandoned.CJ (1860-1), cxv. 70. The legal proceedings were also dropped. This may have been because Treeby lacked the sort of financial resources that Attwood had been able to call upon. Or, more likely, some sort of deal was struck between the candidates about Pinney not standing in Treeby’s way at the next election.
At the 1865 election Treeby promptly stood again, ‘it being understood that Pinney would not seek re-election’.Bristol Times, 3 June 1865. His official election address focused on denouncing the Liberals’ ‘meddling and tampering’ with the constitution, but he also let it be known that he was about to solve the water supply and sewage problems in the ‘east end of the town’ at ‘his own expense’.Sherborne Mercury, 23 May 1865; Dorset County Chronicle, 22 June 1865. A new Liberal, the well-known civil engineer John Hawkshaw, who had recently purchased a ‘considerable property’ in the borough, came forward as Pinney’s replacement, citing his involvement with proposals to bring a railway to the town.The Collected Works of Ann Hawkshaw, ed. D. Bark (2014), p. xxxiv. A second Liberal Francis Dumas, who was also connected with railways, began to campaign as well, drawing lessons from his defeat at Brighton the previous year.See P. Salmon, ‘Brighton’, in HP Commons, 1832-68. Rather than commenting on the advantages that two Liberal opponents would give Treeby, the press noted that:
The desire for railway communication overrides every other consideration, and no candidate will be listened to unless he promises to assist in introducing locomotives so as to bring a portion of tourist traffic to this Dorset watering place.Manchester Courier, 26 Apr. 1865.
The withdrawal of Dumas left Treeby facing a formidable opponent, who was clearly willing to spend. However, shortly before the election Hawkshaw was forced to quit the field, after discovering that his role as a government engineer on the Holyhead harbour made him ineligible to stand.The Times, 7 July 1865. His young son John Clarke Hawkshaw was hastily put up in his place, but despite spending a fortune lost the election by nine votes. The son later recalled how he and his father’s solicitor had visited ‘every voter’ during his canvass, but
only on one of my calls was the question of politics brought forward, and that was in the case of an unfortunate tradesman, who told me, almost with tears in his eyes, that he dared not vote as he wished, for in that case he would lose his trade. The most trying part of my calls was the amount of indifferent cider that I had to drink. Lyme Regis was a most corrupt borough and the people had lived for years on smuggling and elections. Charmouth formed part of the borough for voting purposes, and I heard after the election that there were only eleven electors in Charmouth who were not bribed. I lunched at one house where, after lunch, they asked £100 for their vote.Collected Works of Ann Hawkshaw, p. xxxiv.
Under the terms of the Liberal ministry’s abortive reform proposals of the following year, against which Treeby presented a petition from the town, 28 May 1866, Lyme with its 250 electors was to be ‘regrouped’ with Bridport and Honiton, some 20 miles away, to form a new constituency.The Times, 23, 29 May 1866; PP 1867-8 (3972), xx. 421. Significantly, the Conservative Reform Act of 1867, like the Derby ministry’s bill of 1859, left the borough completely intact. Instead it was the Scottish Reform Act of 1868 that sealed its fate, by redistributing its seat (and those of six other English boroughs) north of the border.31 & 32 Vict., c. 48, clause 43; The Times, 9 June 1868. At the 1868 general election Lyme’s electors duly found themselves part of the Dorset constituency, which was represented by three MPs.Dorset Electoral Register (1868-9). In a rare error, F. Youngs, Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England (1979), i. 114 overlooks the borough’s disfranchisement. Released from what the Times had termed the ‘tyranny’ of enfranchisement, long regarded by the town’s ‘respectable inhabitants’ as ‘a curse rather than a blessing’, Lyme’s economic fortunes now began to improve.The Times, 9 Mar. 1852.
