William Gladstone in 1884.

The act extended the 1867 concessions from the boroughs to the countryside. All men paying an annual rental of £10 or all those holding land valued at £10 now had the vote. The British electorate now totalled over 5,500,000. An Act a year later redistributed constituencies, giving more representation to urban areas (especially London).

The 1884 Reform Act did not establish universal suffrage: although the size of the electorate was widened considerably, 40% of adult males were still without the vote at the time.

Key sections of the act

Section 2: This extended a uniform household and lodger franchise, to all boroughs and counties in the United Kingdom.

Section 3: Men inhabiting a dwelling-house as an employee, whose employer did not live there, were to be treated as if they were occupying as tenants for franchise purposes.

Section 4: Prohibition of multiplicity of votes. This was not to stop people acquiring multiple votes in different constituencies (plural voting was still permitted), but to restrict sub-division of one property to qualify multiple voters (so called fagot voters).

Section 5: A man who was a £10 occupier in a county or borough was to be a voter in that county or borough. This assimilated the previous county occupation franchise and borough occupation franchise into a uniform occupation franchise.

Section 6: Occupation in a borough was not to confer a county franchise.

See also

• The Parliamentary Franchise in the United Kingdom 1885-1918

References

• The Statutes: Second Revised Edition, Vol. XVI 1884-1886, (printed by authority 1900)

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