Potwalloper

This article is about the historical parliamentary borough. For the prison role, see Potwalloper (prison).

"A Pot-Walloper", Times cartoon of 1830. One politician addresses the scruffily-attired peasant voter: "The people of Britain possess the power to return an independent parliament if they will but exert it, think of that my noble pot-walloper"; on the right, another candidate says "Never mind Him I'll give you something to put in your pot", reflecting fears that poor voters would be easily bribed.

A potwalloper (sometimes potwalloner or potwaller) or householder borough was a voter in a parliamentary borough in which the franchise was extended to the male head of any household with a hearth large enough to boil a cauldron (or "wallop a pot").[1] Potwallopers existed in the unreformed House of Commons prior to the Reform Act 1832, and in its predecessors the Irish House of Commons and House of Commons of Great Britain (until 1800) and the House of Commons of England (to 1707).[1]

Compared to other types of franchise used by unreformed House of Commons constituencies, potwalloper franchises generally resulted in a larger proportion of the male population of the borough having the right to vote. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century there was a tendency to try and limit the number of eligible electors in potwalloper boroughs by either changing to another franchise or by disenfranchising poorer householders by excluding people supported by the parish through outdoor relief from voting.

  1. ^ a b Edward Porritt, A. M. Kelley, The Unreformed House of Commons: Scotland and Ireland (1963), pp. 348, 354