1847 Halifax election
In 1847 the Chartist Ernest Jones stood for the Borough of Halifax in the general election. He came fourth and last. And we know who voted for him and who didn’t.
This is because we have a Poll book for the Halifax election. The book lists the names and addresses of electors and who they voted for. It also has a list of electors who didn’t vote and list of voters who had died since they were registered.
The final result was:
- Henry Edwards 511
- Sir Charles Wood 507
- Edward Miall 349
- Ernest Jones 280
But we also know how the count was going at 10.30pm on polling day as we also have a framed announcement of the state of the poll at that time.
The voters
The list also gives details of who voted for only one candidate and who voted for the maximum of two. People who voted for only one candidate were called plumpers, i.e. they plumped for one candidate. According to the analysis of the poll only 3 people plumped for Ernest Jones, whilst 245 people voted for him and Mr Miall. However, looking at the list of votes cast we can find only two plumpers – George Henry Jenkinson, a tailor whose address is listed as 22 Woolshops and Henry Swift, a beerseller at King Cross Street.
The candidates
Ernest Jones
Ernest Jones was a lawyer, poet, journalist and one of the later leaders of the Chartists.
He was born in 1819 in Germany and lived there until he was 19, when his family returned to England. He got married in 1840 and began a career as a barrister. In 1845 he broke away from his career and became an honorary leader of the Chartists.
He issued periodicals such as The Labourer, the Northern Star and Notes to the People in 1851 containing ‘some of his best political and social writings’ and established The People’s Paper which he ran from 1852 to 1858, seeing its function as the maintenance of an independent working class party.
He was arrested on a charge of sedition after a lecture in Manchester’s Campfield, sent for trial at Newgate on 10 July 1848 and sentenced to two years’ solitary confinement
This was Ernest Jones’ first attempt to be elected to Parliament, but it wasn’t to be his last. According to the Dictionary of National Biography when Ernest Jones died of pleurisy in Manchester on 26 January 1869 he was on the verge of becoming one of Manchester’s Liberal MPs, having polled over 10,000 votes when he contested the seat in November 1868. His funeral was the occasion of an impressive radical and working-class demonstration. He was buried in Ardwick cemetery, Manchester.
Henry Edwards
Sir Henry Edwards was a Conservative politician. He was elected Member of Parliament for Halifax along with Charles Wood and held the seat until 1852. In 1857 he was elected MP for Beverley and was re-elected in subsequent elections.
Charles Wood
Charles Wood, first Viscount Halifax was a Whig. He entered parliament for Great Grimsby in 1826 at a cost of £4000. He was returned for Wareham at the 1831 election and elected for the newly created constituency of Halifax in 1832. He represented Halifax until 1865 when he moved to represent Ripon instead. He held various posts in government, including joint secretary to the Treasure, secretary to the Admiralty, chancellor of the Exchequer, president of the Board of Control, first lord of the Admiralty and secretary of state for India.
Edward Miall
Edward Miall was a politician, journalist, and Congregational minister. He was ordained as a minister in 1831 and in 1834 moved to the Bond Street Congregational Chapel in Leicester where he became committed to the struggle against church rates – the annual levies on all householders, including dissenters, for the upkeep of the parish churches.
From 1838 he was further radicalized by the prosecution and imprisonment of a member of his congregation, William Baines, for non-payment, and became ever more dissatisfied with the caution and deference to the government of the metropolitan leaders of dissent, especially Josiah Conder, editor of The Patriot. As a result, Miall undertook to raise the capital for a weekly newspaper to rival The Patriot and to become its editor. He resigned his pulpit in 1840 and issued the first copy of The Nonconformist on 14 April 1841. It was in The Nonconformist that Miall coined the phrase ‘complete suffrage’ for universal male enfranchisement
Miall first stood for parliament in September 1845, as a candidate under Anti-State Church Association auspices, coming third in a by-election at Southwark. He finally entered parliament in 1852 when he was returned to parliament, representing Rochdale, a seat he held unit 1857. In 1865 he came close to securing nomination for Manchester. After twice, in 1867 and 1868, unsuccessfully contesting Bradford, Miall returned to the Commons as its MP, on 12 March 1869.