The Sun.
London, England, 1869-11-04 00:00:00

A NOTTINGHAM MUNICIPAL ELECTION.

The borough of Nottingham has on more than one occa-
sion drawn attention to itself at some important crisis of
English history. The burning of Nottingham Castle
shared with the riots at Bristol something of that position
with respect to the first Reform Bill, which the invasion of
Hyde Park and the destruction of its too-celebrated
railings bore to the second. Nottingham is one of the
oldest corporate boroughs in the kingdom, and its
corporation is a most active and energetic body, as becomes
the busy, thriving town it rules. In common with all the
boroughs of England, Nottingham held its municipal elec-
tions on Monday last. The elections turned, as they do in
most boroughs, on questions of politics, and the fight
was one entirely between Conservatives and Liberals.
There was however, this year, in all such elections, a
double element of novelty. An act of last session had given
female occupiers municipal votes, and had reduced the re-
sidential qualification for municipal voters from three
years' residence, at which it was fixed by the Municipal
Reform Act, to the single year required for the Parlia-
mentary franchise. This extension of the area of voting
seems to have intensified this year's contest in Nottingham.
The Corporation is predominately Liberal, but the Conser-
vatives made an unusually vigorous, though quite unsuc-
cessful, effort to dispossess their opponents. The
methods of this fight we will not venture to
describe in our own words, but will quote entirely
from the three daily papers published in Nottingham.
The Conservative Nottingham Guardian describes
the elections in all the wards save two—and those two of
course Conservative wards—as "mere farces." "Strictly
speaking, they were not elections at all, the voters having
been bought like so many sheep." The Daily Express, the
organ of the Liberal party, accuses its opponents of
"having resorted to a systematic plan of bribery through-
out the day," and records how in one ward there was a
fight, " till the Tory lambs, finding the Dolphin getting
too hot for them, beat an ignominous retreat."
But our chief informant is the Nottingham Journal,
which, as it is neither cold nor hot in its Libe-
ralism, is free to give an account of proceedings in
which both sides shared. The Journal says there were
contests in every ward, and that the candidates "were loud
in their denunciation of bribery and corruption, from
which one would have thought an era of purity was about
to dawn upon our notoriously corrupt borough." Never-
theless, the sum spent in bribery is declared by the Journal
to have been £2,000. On Monday night, towards mid-
night, the Journal sent a reporter to various places to see
how the free and independent electors bore themselves
after the fight. At the King's Arms, in Byron Ward,
this gentleman found a sort of court being held:—
"Three youthful clerks, with a more elderly person at
their elbow, were seated over a series of papers at a broad
table, and before them stood several members of the
great unwashed,' who were having their claims'
settled. The parties to be paid were admitted by three
or four at a time by a back door which opened close by
the table, and as the door was opened by a faithful
Cerberus, it was plain that even at that late hour the
staircase was crowded with voters whose wistful faces
would have formed an excellent subject for the
painter. The members and attendants of this
court seemed so intent upon their business, so occu-
pied in discussing when certain bargains were made,
and what were the exact sums agreed to be paid, that
they took no notice of the intrusion. The intruder, how-
ever, soon got tired of watching this little game, and
again going below made inquiry for the landlord. Mr.
Chettle presently appeared, and with the true pathos of
an ill-treated mine Host' led the intruder round to inspect
how doors had been smashed, pannelling dislocated, and
staircases crippled by the eager voters, who had been
pressing in as starved-out bees might press to a feast of
sugar.'" At another inn, in the same ward, similar scenes
were being enacted, but there the voters were spending their
bribes, or presenting their tickets for ale. " The aspect of
the room was very singular—a large proportion of the
occupants being women, and most of them being
voters who had just received their crown' for their
day's work. There was no secrecy about the affair, and,
as our reporter left, he was saluted by a weary attendant
who stood at the door, Ha, they near done payin' ye%

mester ?'" During the day bribery seems to have been.

equally open. Our ungallant contemporary says that in
this same ward a gentleman who canvassed on behalf
of the Liberal candidates met only one female voter
who did not ask, "What do you stand?" In

another ward forty men presented themselves to a
losing candidate just before four o'clock, and offered to

vote for him for a shilling each. In another ward the
Liberals gave £1 a vote, and the Conservatives 10s., and of
course the Liberals won ; and in yet another ward, where
professions of purity were loudly made on both sides, the
.Ton rnal says, " a great many voters on one side
or the other received large white pieces of
and did not seem ashamed to make the
matter known. On both sides people were driven to
"the poll like sheep, at dinner time, several women being
amongst the drivers." In fact, it is clear that this election,
like those of which the witnesses spoke, has been an affair
,f money, Such is the picture of a great English borough
olecting its local Parliament, as drawn by its own chro-
niclers. Nottingham is, however, no worse than many
other boroughs, and had we not named it, many another
borough would have seen in the pictvre its own features.