Letter from Election Agent R. W. Kirkby

Description:A letter from R. W. Kirkby, one of Lord Gower’s election agents, refers to a concern within the Election Committee that Lord Gower’s tenants would divide their votes evenly between opposing candidates. Each voter got two votes, and the Committee feared that voters would use one of their two votes to support Lord Gower and the second to support the opposing candidate. This vote splitting would have been detrimental to Lord Gower and would not ensure his victory at the Poll. Hannah Barker and David Vincent describe the different types of voting used in elections at this time. ‘Straight’ voters used both votes for allied candidates, whereas Other voters would ‘plump’, casting only one of their two votes ‘to ensure the success of a single candidate’. Lord Gower's Election Committee were concerned about ‘Splitters’ who used their two votes to vote for two opposing candidates.

Kirkby refers to ‘the report of part of his Lordship’s tenantry dividing their votes between Earl Gower & Sir John Boughey’. He describes the story as merely ‘a vague report’, adding that ‘no rumour of that kind has transpired in this neighbourhood’. Kirkby reports that he and another agent, Mr. Penson, would ‘look strictly to it & request & press’ the voters ‘to give the Noble Earl a Plumper’.

Contextual information from Barker, Hannah and Vincent, David, Language, Print and Electoral Politics 1790-1832: Newcastle-under-Lyme Broadsides (Boydell Press, 2001)

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