Tag: elections

‘Have They a Sense of Justice?’: Britain’s first female jurors at the Bristol Quarter Sessions

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Headline Western Daily Press 29 July 1920

The right to trial by jury has been traditionally acknowledged as a pillar of the English legal system. Under the principle of ‘twelve good men and true’, juries had been trusted for centuries with the responsibility of dispensing justice impartially and according to evidence. Defendants had the right to be tried ‘by their peers’, but juries had always been composed entirely of men. In 1919, reforms in the law allowed women to take their seats as jurors in a criminal trial for the first time. The trial took place here in Bristol in 1920, and not everyone was entirely happy about it.

Elections before the secret ballot: the Bristol Poll Book of 1852

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Bristol's last Poll Book was published in 1852. Poll Books include the personal details of voters such as their names, profession and address. Furthermore, these Poll Books can be valuable pieces of historical evidence. Stevens’ article offers a critical study of the 1852 Bristol Poll Book, shedding light on the voting intentions and political views of different parishes, classes, families and professions.

The Transition of Taunton from ‘wicked town’ to ‘peaceable borough’

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In the years after 1600 Taunton was marked by a heady mixture of radical Puritanism and the volatile wool trade. Together these pitched Taunton into the centre of the Civil War in the area and, on two occasions in the second half of the seventeenth century, into open rebellion against the government. William Gibson follows Taunton’s transition from a centre of rebellion to peaceable borough in the eighteenth century.

Guardians of the Poor: A Philanthropic Female Elite in Bristol

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Being a Poor Law Guardian was an elected position which was open to certain middle and upper class women from 1869 and to women in general after 1894. The work was unpaid and in that sense similar to much work undertaken in the voluntary sector. Moira Martin examines the entry of women into one sphere of local government, the administration of Poor Relief.