Elections - Document from the Enoch Wood scrapbook

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Date:November 1832

Description:312 electors from Stoke-on-Trent here declare that they wish to ask "certain political questions" of their would-be Members of Parliament - and all of them are listed.

A meeting is to take place on 13 November 1832 at 10am, at the Swan Inn in Hanley.

This will be the first time that the Potteries' electors are to be given the chance to vote for their very own representative.

Until 1832, they have been obliged to share with the rest of Staffordshire.

Now, along with other industrial areas like Sheffield, Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester, Stoke has an MP all of its own.

Who can vote?

Although several thousand people live in the area, these 312 men may be the only ones entitled to vote.

Men who own little or no property are not allowed to have their say, and not one woman in the whole of Britain has the vote. In fact, women will have to wait until after the First World War, almost 100 years on.

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