View source for Potwalloper

{{Short description|Parliamentary Borough}}
{{about|the historical parliamentary borough|the prison role|Potwalloper (prison)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{More citations needed|date=December 2010}}
[[File:A pot-walloper (BM 1868,0808.9198).jpg|thumb|upright=1.8|"A Pot-Walloper", ''[[The Times (UK)|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 [[Suffrage|franchise]] was extended to the male head of any [[household]] with a [[hearth]] large enough to boil a cauldron (or "wallop a pot").<ref name=scotire>Edward Porritt, A. M. Kelley, ''The Unreformed House of Commons: Scotland and Ireland'' (1963), pp. 348, 354</ref> 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).<ref name=scotire />

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.

== English potwalloper boroughs ==
From the time of the [[English Restoration|Restoration]], the only English boroughs to elect on a potwalloper or inhabitant franchise were:
* [[Abingdon (UK Parliament constituency)|Abingdon]] (1690–1708, and only if electors were not in receipt of [[alms]])
* [[Amersham (UK Parliament constituency)|Amersham]] (until 1705; electors in receipt of alms were disfranchised in 1690)
* [[Ashburton (UK Parliament constituency)|Ashburton]] (until 1708)
* [[Aylesbury (UK Parliament constituency)|Aylesbury]] (only if electors were not in receipt of alms; after 1804 freeholders living near the town were enfranchised also)
* [[Bedford (UK Parliament constituency)|Bedford]] (providing electors were not in receipt of alms)
* [[Callington (UK Parliament constituency)|Callington]] (required one year's continuous residence. The franchise in this borough was in dispute but both definitions amounted to the same people in practice)
* [[Cirencester (UK Parliament constituency)|Cirencester]]
* [[Hertford (UK Parliament constituency)|Hertford]] (providing electors were not in receipt of alms; [[Franklin (class)|freemen]] voted as well)
* [[Hindon (UK Parliament constituency)|Hindon]] (providing electors were not in receipt of alms)
* [[Honiton (UK Parliament constituency)|Honiton]] (1690–1711 and from 1724, but only if electors were not in receipt of alms)
* [[Ilchester (UK Parliament constituency)|Ilchester]] (from 1702, but only if electors were not in receipt of alms)
* [[Ludgershall (UK Parliament constituency)|Ludgershall]] (until 1698)
* [[Milborne Port (UK Parliament constituency)|Milborne Port]] (until 1702)
* [[Minehead (UK Parliament constituency)|Minehead]]
* [[Mitchell (UK Parliament constituency)|Mitchell]] (until 1715, and only if electors were not in receipt of alms)
* [[Northampton (UK Parliament constituency)|Northampton]] (from 1715)
* [[Pontefract (UK Parliament constituency)|Pontefract]] (from 1783)
* [[Portsmouth (UK Parliament constituency)|Portsmouth]] (until 1695)
* [[Preston (UK Parliament constituency)|Preston]] (from 1768)
* [[Reading (UK Parliament constituency)|Reading]] (until 1708)
* [[St Germans (UK Parliament constituency)|St Germans]] (one year residency)
* [[Southwark (UK Parliament constituency)|Southwark]] (until 1702, and only if electors were not in receipt of alms)
* [[Taunton (UK Parliament constituency)|Taunton]]
* [[Tregony (UK Parliament constituency)|Tregony]]
* [[Wendover (UK Parliament constituency)|Wendover]] (providing electors were not in receipt of alms)

== Irish potwalloper boroughs ==
There were eleven such boroughs in Ireland until the Union with [[Kingdom of Great Britain|Great Britain]] in 1801. Ireland also had seven "manor boroughs", in which only [[Freehold (law)|freeholders]] voted.<ref name=scotire /> The potwallopers included  [[Baltimore (Parliament of Ireland constituency)|Baltimore]], [[Lisburn]], [[Antrim, County Antrim|Antrim]], [[Swords, Dublin|Swords]] and [[Downpatrick]], and before [[Catholic emancipation|Emancipation]] only non-Roman Catholics could vote.<ref>Hugh Shearman, ''Modern Ireland'' (1952), p. 30</ref>

== Quotations ==

When [[Thomas Babington Macaulay]] complained about the insufficiencies of the suffrage system in the early 19th century, he wrote:

{{quote|This is an aristocracy, the principle of which is to invest a hundred drunken potwallopers in one place, or the owner of a ruined hovel in another with powers which are withheld from cities renowned in the furthest ends of the earth.}}

[[Thomas Hardy]], in his first novel, ''[[Desperate Remedies]]'', used the term {{citation needed span|date=March 2022|to mean a kind of [[petit-bourgeois]] vulgarian:}}

{{quote|Ancient pot-wallopers, and thriving shopkeepers, in their intervals of leisure, stood at their shop doors – their toes hanging over the edge of the step, and their obese waists hanging over their toes – and in discourses with friends on the pavement, formulated the course of the improvident, and reduced the children's prospects to a shadow-like attenuation.<ref>Thomas Hardy, ''Desperate Remedies'' (1889, Ward and Downey, London), p. 12</ref>}}

== Notes ==
{{reflist|30em}}

{{EB1911 Poster|Potwalloper}}

[[Category:Constituencies of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (historic)]]