Description:When the Returning Officer scrutinised the votes cast at the poll he examined whether the people voting were actually eligible to vote in the Newcastle local elections. Voting rights were very restrictive in the late eighteenth century, excluding women and men without certain property rights.
Why were votes rejected?
Amongst the documents relating to votes cast at the Newcastle local elections, the Sutherland Papers collection contains a booklet categorising the various reasons why voters could have their votes rejected. The booklet also lists the people who had their votes rejected on these different grounds.
Men who had been absent from Newcastle for a year or more ‘by residence in another place’ were not eligible to vote. Single men who were not resident in Newcastle and who had ‘no settled residence or contract anywhere else’ were also disqualified from voting.
The votes of people who had given up their lodgings elsewhere to return to Newcastle ‘for the election’ were rejected, as were votes cast by people who had received Parish pay, church bread, or been maintained in the Workhouse within thetwelve months before the election.
Although men alone were eligible to vote, the circumstances of their wives affected their right to vote. Men whose wife ‘before her marriage or child by her former husband had received Parish pay or been maintained in the Workhouse’ could not vote. Men ‘whose Bastards’ had received ‘Parish relief’ also had their votes rejected by the Returning Officer.