Poll Books

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010 at 10:12 am

Poll books were published from the late 1600s onwards, right through into the late 1800s. The Society of Genealogists poll book collection have been researched and mentioned in many academic publications as one of the most extensive in the world.

Poll books list not only the names, addresses and occupations of our ancestors but also their political inclinations as they list exactly whom they voted for.

Poll books include the person’s ‘qualification’ to vote which usually meant you had to be a freeholder of a property worth at least 40 shillings. Although this was not always the case as shown in the below ‘Town of Bedford’ poll book extract where the tenant’s of the properties are also entitled to vote.

Another way a less than wealthy ancestor may have been able to vote was if he lived in a ‘Potwalloper’ county (see below) where householders were allowed to vote if they had ‘a hearth large enough to boil, or wallop, a cauldron, or pot’.

Of course, if you were a woman the above did not apply as votes for women (providing they were householders, married to a householder or if they held a university degree) were not allowed until 1918.

1832 Bedford poll book showing that tenants were entitled to vote.

The ‘Potwalloping’ Borough of Colchester 1830.

A 1831 Cambridge poll book showing candidate Viscount Palmerston who later (aged 71) went on to become the oldest Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1859.