The requirement to keep a written register of those eligible to vote in England and Wales was set out in the Representation of the People Act 1832, known as the first Reform Act or Great Reform Act. This Act also removed 56 rotten or pocket boroughs, broadened the property qualifications needed to vote and disenfranchised women completely. The majority of working men still had no vote.
Two more Reform Acts followed, (in 1867 and 1884), which again broadened the qualifications needed to vote but property or residential requirements were still needed. For Armitage in 1905, for example, Edward L W Johns, who by then was living in Gloucestershire having sold the pottery in 1900, was able to vote in elections in Armitage because he still had property in the village. A bigger percentage (60%) of the male population over the age of 21 had by now received the right to vote but women were still left behind.
Pressure grew over the next thirty years, not only about women having the vote but the whole concept of owning property being a requirement to be eligible to vote. The young men fighting in the first World War certainly concentrated politicians’ attention on the fact that they could fight for their country but they couldn’t vote in elections. The 1918 Act abolished virtually all property qualifications so all British men living in England and Wales over the age of 21 years of age could vote. The concept of giving women an equal vote was stopped because the number of men who had died in the war would have given women 57% of the vote and the politicians would not accept that. The age at which women could vote was therefore set at 30 years.
Two further Acts followed in the 20th C – in 1928 women’s voting age was dropped to the same as men and in 1969 the voting age was dropped from 21 to 18.
Clicking on the buttons below will take you to a page for the electoral register of that particular year – more will be added as I transcribe more records.