The seminar takes place on 17 February 2026, between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here.

The mid-Victorian artistic decoration of the Palace of Westminster, the home of UK Parliament, has long been understood as a fundamentally masculinised scheme. This ambitious art project was overseen by the Royal Commission on the Fine Arts (1841-1863), and was part of the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster after the 1834 fire.

The new interior in the Palace of Westminster offered an opportunity to promote British art and cultivate national political identity through carefully constructed imagery. My paper for the Parliaments, Politics and People seminar on 17 February demonstrates that female visual representation was a central concern of the commission.

The 1841-1863 Fine Arts Commission made a conscious effort to include and increase imagery of women throughout the Palace of Westminster’s principal chambers. In doing so, the commissioners conceptualised women as integral to the development of the British political constitution. Their choice of artworks also reflected Queen Victoria’s position as monarch, foregrounding women as religious and military leaders, and as channels and sometimes exercisers of political power.

CG

Dr Cara Gathern is a heritage professional with a PhD from the University of Brighton. She works as a Researcher and Curatorial Assistant for UK Parliament Heritage Collections, where she has an academic interest in the 19th-century scheme under the Commission of Fine Arts, and the 20th-century mosaics. Her Oxford DNB entry on Master Mosaicist Gertrude Martin was published in December 2024 and her journal article on early female contributions to Parliamentary art, co-authored with Caroline Babington, is due to be published in Women’s History Review in July 2026.

The seminar takes place on 17 February 2026, between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here.

On Monday 20 July 1789, Henry Beaufoy, MP for Great Yarmouth, moved the third reading of a bill he had sponsored through the House of Commons for instituting a perpetual commemoration of the 1688 Revolution. The bill was a relatively simple one, seeking merely to insist that in December every year, clergy in the Church of England would read out the Bill of Rights, thereby reminding their congregations of the events that had seen James II expelled and William III and Mary II installed as monarchs.

Beaufoy’s bill had to compete with other rather more urgent measures. These included one for continuing an Act passed in the previous session for regulating the shipping of enslaved people in British ships from the coast of Africa; and another for granting over £20,000 towards defraying the costs of the Warren Hastings trial, which had commenced the previous year and would continue to annoy the House until 1795. Consequently, it was late in the day when Beaufoy got to his feet and, although his motion carried by 23 votes to 14, it was determined that as the House now lacked the requisite 40 members present to make a quorum, the Commons should adjourn.

Next day, Beaufoy tried again. Once more, there was opposition. During the two days when the bill was debated objections were raised by Sir William Dolben and Sir Joseph Mawbey, the latter arguing that Beaufoy was merely mimicking the Whig Club in seeking popularity, while Henry James Pye considered the measure ridiculous as it would result in two commemorative events each year. Others were warmly in favour, though and, when it came to a division, the motion to give the bill a third reading was carried. Following a failed effort by Mawbey to introduce an amendment granting to each clergyman required to read the declaration 20 shillings, the bill was passed and sent up to the Lords. [Commons Journal, xliv. 543-7]

Beaufoy’s bill had its origins in the centenary celebrations of the Revolution, which had been marked across the country the previous autumn. Like his bill, not everything had proceeded smoothly. Not least, there were obvious rivalries between the clubs and societies heading up the various events. There was even disagreement on precisely when to mark the day. The Revolution Society had chosen 4 November, on the basis that this was both William III’s birthday (and wedding anniversary) and the day that he had made landfall. The Constitution Club, on the other hand, chose to hold its entertainment on 5 November, which chimed with the date chosen by John Tillotson (soon to be Archbishop of Canterbury), when preaching his 1689 commemorative sermon. It also echoed celebrations of the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot and this dinner was rounded off with toasts to the ‘three eights’: 1588 (Armada), 1688 and 1788. [Gazetteer and Daily Advertiser, 6 November 1788]

Aside from somewhat petty disagreements about whether 4 or 5 November was most apt, several of the societies also had strikingly different political outlooks and exhibited fierce rivalry. Speaking at the Whig Club, Richard Sheridan concluded his remarks with proposing a subscription for erecting a monument to the Revolution, which appeared to get off to a fine start with £500 being pledged almost at once. The plan was for the edifice to be located at Runnymede, emphasizing the links between the safeguarding of English liberty with Magna Carta, and the completion of the process with William of Orange’s successful invasion.

Not everyone liked the idea of a physical monument, though, and when the proposal was read out at other clubs, it received either muted or downright hostile responses. Speaking at the Constitution Club’s dinner at Willis’ Rooms, presided over by Lord Hood and featuring around 700 diners, John Horne Tooke made no secret of his contempt for the Whig Club’s plan. It was at this meeting that Beaufoy first raised his idea for a day of commemoration to be legislated for by Parliament, though at least one paper reported that his speech had been drowned out by the noise around him.

Elsewhere, there was more harmony. One of the grandest celebrations of 1688 took part at Holkham Hall in Norfolk, where Thomas Coke (future Earl of Leicester) laid on a spectacular firework display as well as mounting a recreation of William’s landing at Brixham having brought in squadrons of horses and loaded them onto miniature ships, which were launched on a canal. Perhaps the most evocative event, though, was one of many held in London taverns, where an unidentified man, said to be 112 years old, was reported to have been in attendance and chaired by the company. According to the paper he was one of ten centurions residing in the French hospital on Old Street, but at 112 he was likely the only one of them who actually remembered the Revolution taking place. [E. Johnson’s British Gazette and Sunday Monitor, 9 November 1788]

All of this was cast thoroughly into the shade by the very unhelpful timing of the king’s illness, which had commenced that summer but become steadily more acute through October and finally reached a crisis on the symbolic date of 5 November. The Prince of Wales had been on his way to Holkham to take part in Coke’s celebrations, but was forced to turn back after being alerted to the king’s deteriorating condition. At a time when the stalwarts of the Revolution Settlement were trying to make the case for the stability it had provided in settling the throne on the House of Brunswick, the prospect of a king no longer able to fulfil his constitutional functions was a disaster.

By the time Beaufoy finally made his motion in the Commons, the king had recovered but that did not ease the progress of what always seems to have been a rather unwanted bill. Having made its way through the Commons, the measure was presented to a thinly attended House of Lords on Thursday 23 July 1789, and a motion for the bill to be given a first reading was moved by Earl Stanhope – a leading member of the Revolution Society.

Stanhope’s motion was objected to by the Bishop of Bangor, who insisted that a prayer was already said for the Revolution in church each year. Stanhope attempted to argue in favour of the ‘pious and political expediency’ of the bill, insisting that the event was not commemorated satisfactorily in church. [Oracle, 24 July] The Lord Chancellor left the wool sack to enable him to offer his own opinions on the matter, backing up Bangor’s view and arguing the bill to be absurd, before a final contribution was made in favour of the proposed measure by the Earl of Hopetoun. The motion for the first reading was then negatived by six votes to 13, after which the Lords resolved without more ado to throw the unwanted bill out. [Diary or Woodfall’s Register, 24 July; The World, 24 July] Sheridan’s wish for a grand monument met with a similar fate, though an obelisk celebrating the centenary was raised at Kirkley Hall near Ponteland in Northumberland, by Newton Ogle, Dean of Winchester, and another at Castle Howe near Kendal in Cumbria.

As far as commemoration of 1688 was concerned this was far from the end of the story. Two centuries on, the tercentenary witnessed an unusual expression of unity from the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and the Leader of the Opposition, Neil Kinnock. Moving a humble address to the Queen, expressing the House’s ‘great pleasure in celebrating the tercentenary of these historic events of 1688 and 1689 that established those constitutional freedoms under the law which Your Majesty’s Parliament and people have continued to enjoy for three hundred years’, Thatcher was answered by Kinnock, agreeing that it was: ‘a worthy act, not only because it celebrates a significant advance, as the Prime Minister just said, but because it requires us all to consider the character of our democracy…’

Father of the House, Sir Bernard Braine, was next to speak. He welcomed the rare moment of political harmony and underlined the key principal about what 1688 meant to everyone in the chamber:

‘It is the knowledge that the parliamentary system which we jointly serve is greater than the sum total of all who are here at any one time.’

RDEE

Further Reading:

John Brooke, King George III (1972)

Journals of the House of Commons

Journals of the House of Lords

In the chamber used by the House of Commons before the catastrophic fire of October 1834, women – officially barred from the chamber itself since February 1778 – had been able to listen to debates through the ‘ventilator’ in the attic above St Stephen’s Chapel. In this cramped and uncomfortable space, a small number of women could look down into the chamber and listen to debates. An account in 1832 described

a circular shed of sixteen sides or panels … a small oblong square aperture in every panel serves to admit the heads of sixteen anxious females who creep, unseen and unheard, to see and hear. … Green baize benches surround the shed, and afford repose to the wearied forms of dowagers and damsels.

After the fire, many of the old chamber’s features were reproduced when MPs moved into their temporary home in the former House of Lords at the beginning of 1835. It was obvious, though, that the unusual means by which women had accessed debates would not be directly replicated in the temporary Commons, and initially, no provision was made for female spectators. However, MPs realised that their temporary relocation offered an opportunity for experimenting with new features, which resulted in changes such as a dedicated reporters’ gallery and the construction of a second division lobby.

In keeping with this, on 16 July 1835, George Grantley Berkeley, Whig MP for Gloucestershire West, successfully moved for a select committee to consider adapting part of the strangers’ gallery in the temporary Commons for the use of ladies and making similar provision in the new House of Commons. He dismissed the ‘erroneous opinion’ that there was ‘too great interference of ladies already in the political world’ and asked whether anyone would ‘assert that the female portion of the population does not contain a vast share of the better intellect of the country’. He noted women’s access to debates in the pre-fire Commons and urged that they be given ‘a less lofty but more comfortable accommodation’ in the temporary chamber. He also suggested that it would be beneficial if, as some predicted, women’s presence prompted ‘the language of the House’ to ‘assume a softer, a more poetical, and a more civil style’.

The committee’s report less than two weeks later recommended that not more than a quarter of the strangers’ gallery should be partitioned off before the start of the next session to accommodate 24 ladies. It also stipulated that future provision should be made for 40 ladies in the new House of Commons. Berkeley’s motion in early August 1835 that the Commons agree to the committee’s report was narrowly rejected, by 83 votes to 86. Undaunted, in May 1836 he moved that the plan for a ladies’ gallery drawn up by the architect Sir Robert Smirke should be carried out ‘as speedily as possible … at such hours as may not interfere with the business of the House’. MPs who supported Berkeley’s motion dismissed concerns that there was anything ‘improper’ about ladies listening to Commons debates. The Radical MP for Wigan, Richard Potter, noted that

during the Session of 1833 and 1834, he had repeatedly observed hon. Members take their wives and daughters into the ventilator, particularly when subjects of importance were under discussion, and he felt convinced they would not have done so had they supposed the least injurious consequences to have followed.

Among these wives and daughters was Harriet Grote, wife of the MP for London, who recorded that ‘one hears very well, but seeing is difficult, being distant from the members, and the apertures in the ventilator being small and grated’.

Less convinced about the need to provide for the ladies was the Wolverhampton MP Charles Villiers, who questioned whether there was any demand for it, as he was unaware of any petitions on the subject. He also queried how the limited number of places would be allocated. Berkeley’s motion passed by 132 votes to 90, but further progress was scuppered when the Commons voted in August 1836 against granting £400 to fund the work. Although only 70 MPs were present, 42 of whom opposed the grant, this occasion saw the fullest debate on the matter. Members of the Melbourne ministry spoke on either side of the question, with the future prime minister Viscount Palmerston among those backing Berkeley, on the grounds that ‘the ladies … took very considerable interest’ in Commons proceedings.

His ministerial colleague Sir John Hobhouse was among the opponents of a ladies’ gallery, considering it ‘a very bad joke’. Not only might ‘the peace and comfort of men’s homes’ be disturbed by women wishing to discuss the issues debated in the Commons, but women’s presence in the House would be ‘most indecent’, as ‘in the course of a debate it was impossible to prevent allusions from being made which no man could wish his mother, sister, wife, or daughter to hear’.

Such objections were ridiculed by the Sheffield MP James Silk Buckingham, for whom they confirmed the oft-repeated accusation that the Commons ‘was at least half a century behind the rest of the community’. He protested that after hearing Hobhouse’s speech,

one would think, first, that the women of England were at present wholly ignorant, and wholly indifferent to, the public affairs of their country; and next, that by the simple act of admitting some twenty or thirty ladies, chiefly, perhaps, the relatives of Members of that House, occasionally to hear the debates – the whole of the females would be converted into mere politicians – would cease to become good wives and good mothers – and be so many firebrands casting nothing but discord into every circle of society.

Berkeley tried a different approach the following year, moving for an address asking the king to give directions to carry out the select committee’s recommendations. His motion was seconded by William Chetwynd, who rebuffed the idea that ‘the presence of the ladies would lengthen the debate, and induce Members to enlarge on subjects, and cause considerable delay’, arguing that ‘hon. Members would be less likely to talk nonsense in the presence of ladies’. However, they were defeated by 92 votes to 116.

No further debates on the ladies’ gallery have been traced in Hansard, but there were evidently behind the scenes negotiations to enable its construction, and in March 1842, Berkeley was rewarded for his perseverance in securing their gallery with the presentation ‘by ladies’ of a piece of silver. The gallery appears to have been built during the parliamentary recess of October 1841 to February 1842. In late February 1842, the Court Journal recorded the ‘little known’ fact that ‘a small enclosure behind the strangers’ gallery has been erected … for the accommodation of political ladies desirous of hearing the debates’. Rather than the 24 spaces for women recommended by the 1835 committee, it had ‘not room for more than 12 or 13 of the fairer sex’, who could ‘peep totally unobserved’ through ‘a space about the breadth of a hand’. Access was controlled by written ‘orders’ signed by the serjeant-at-arms. After a seven year absence, women again had a space from which they could witness the proceedings of the Commons.

Among this gallery’s earliest occupants were the wives of one future Conservative prime minister and three future Liberal prime ministers: Lady Stanley (later Countess of Derby), Catherine Gladstone, Viscountess Palmerston and Lady Frances Russell. They attended to hear the debate on the corn laws on 14 February 1842, in which Lord John Russell and William Gladstone spoke. Catherine’s account suggested that conditions were as confined and awkward as those in the ventilator had been, recording that ‘I found myself nearly upon Lady John Russell’s lap!!’ Frances Russell told her that her heart was beating in anticipation of Russell’s speech, and ‘she was all attention’ when Russell began. The ladies’ gallery does, however, appear to have had satisfactory acoustics, as Catherine recorded that when Gladstone spoke, ‘we heard him very well – he was very rapid – without the smallest hesitation throughout’.

A later visitor to the ladies’ gallery in the temporary chamber was Charlotte Brontë, whose publisher George Smith took her there in June 1850. He recollected in his autobiography that ‘the Ladies’ Gallery of those days was behind the Strangers’ Gallery, and from it one could see the eyes of the ladies above, nothing more’. Brontë evidently found her visit to the Commons interesting, as when Smith went to find her, thinking she had indicated that she wanted to leave, she told him that ‘I made no signal. I did not wish to come away’.

Just as they had been in the ventilator, women were permitted to access debates, but kept out of sight of Members of Parliament. The grudging and uncomfortable way in which they were accommodated was encapsulated by the Birmingham Journal’s description of the ladies’ gallery of the temporary chamber as ‘the sweltering little stewpan assigned females by the gallantry of the British House of Commons’, not what Berkeley had anticipated when he lobbied for their inclusion. The nickname given to the ladies’ gallery in the new House of Commons – ‘the cage’ – showed that matters improved little after 1852.

Further reading

Sarah Richardson, ‘Parliament as Viewed Through a Woman’s Eyes: Gender and Space in the 19th-Century Commons’, Parliamentary History 38:1 (2019), 119-34

Sarah Richardson, The Political Worlds of Women: Gender and Politics in Nineteenth Century Britain (2013)

I am very grateful to Dr Mari Takayanagi for drawing to my attention the subtle differences between Catherine Gladstone’s account of her visit to the Ladies’ Gallery as published in Mary Drew, Catherine Gladstone (1919) and her original entry in her diary, held at Gladstone’s Library, GLA/GGA/4/9/1/10, and have revised this article thanks to her help.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on the Victorian Commons website on 8 March 2024, written by Dr Kathryn Rix.

By the late Georgian period, the buildings of the Palace of Westminster had become an accident waiting to happen. The rambling complex of medieval and early modern apartments making up the Houses of Parliament – which over the centuries architects including Sir Christopher Wren, James Wyatt and Sir John Soane had attempted to improve and expand – was by then largely unfit for purpose. Complaints from MPs about the state of their accommodation had been rumbling on since the 1790s, and reached a peak when they found themselves packed into the hot, airless and cramped Commons chamber during the passage of the 1832 Reform Act.

Unable to agree on a solution for new accommodation, in the end the decision was made for them. The long-overdue catastrophe finally occurred on 16 October 1834. Throughout the day, a chimney fire had smouldered under the floor of the House of Lords chamber, caused by the unsupervised and ill-advised burning of two large cartloads of wooden tally sticks (a form of medieval tax receipt created by the Exchequer, a government office based at Westminster) in the heating furnaces below. Warning signs were persistently ignored by the senile Housekeeper and careless Clerk of Works, leading the Prime Minister Viscount Melbourne later to declare the disaster ‘one of the greatest instances of stupidity upon record’. 

At a few minutes after six in the evening, a doorkeeper’s wife returning from an errand finally spotted the flames licking the scarlet curtains around Black Rod’s Box in the Lords chamber where they were emerging through the floor from the collapsed furnace flues. There was panic within the Palace but initially no-one seems to have raised the alarm outside, perhaps imagining that the fire – which had now taken hold and was visible on the roof – could be brought under control quickly. They were mistaken. A huge fireball exploded out of the building at around 6.30 p.m., lighting up the evening sky over London and immediately attracting hundreds of thousands of people.

The fire turned into the most significant blaze in the city between 1666 and the Blitz, burning fiercely for the rest of the night. It was fought by parish and insurance company fire engines, and the private London Fire Engine Establishment, led by Superintendent James Braidwood, the grandfather of modern firefighting theory. Hundreds of volunteers, from the King’s sons and Cabinet ministers downwards, manned the pumps on the night, and were paid in beer for their efforts. Contrary to popular opinion, onlookers in the vast crowds did not generally stand around cheering. Most were awestruck and terrified by the spectacle, and some suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result. Others were injured in the crush, and plenty were pickpocketed, but astonishingly no-one died in the disaster.

As it burned, the fire stripped away the later, and often ugly, accretions of many centuries, revealing the beautiful gothic buildings beneath, including the Painted Chamber, St Stephen’s Chapel and its lower chapel of St Mary’s, in use at the time of the fire as the Court of Claims, House of Commons and Speaker’s Dining Room respectively. In the aftermath of the fire these became a focus for much antiquarian activity and delighted the sightseers touring the ruins.   

By the middle of the evening it was clear that the fire was uncontrollable in most of the Palace. Westminster Hall then became the focus for Braidwood’s efforts and those of his men and hundreds of volunteers. The thick stone Norman walls provided an excellent barrier against the spread of fire, but the late fourteenth-century oak roof timbers were in great peril. ‘Damn the House of Commons, let it blaze away!’ cried the Chancellor of the Exchequer Viscount Althorp desperately, ‘But save, O save the Hall!’ The efforts of all, from the highest to the lowest, plus a lucky change of wind direction at midnight, and the arrival of the London Fire Engine Establishment’s great, floating, barge-mounted fire engine, finally started to quell the fire in the early hours and ultimately saved Westminster Hall.  The fire crews finally left five days later, having put out the last of the fires which kept bursting out from the ruins.

The following day revealed a shattered and smoking collection of buildings, most of which were cleared in the months that followed and the stone sold to salvage merchants or pushed into the river. Temporary chambers and committee rooms were available for occupation by February 1835, and a government competition commenced to design a new Houses of Parliament on the ruined site. Charles Barry, aided by Augustus Pugin, won the commission and together they created the most famous building in the United Kingdom. The patched-up parts of the old Palace were finally pulled down in the early 1850s. Only Westminster Hall, the Undercroft Chapel of St Mary and part of the Cloister remain today of the survivors of 1834. The damage to the wrecked and uninsured Palace was estimated at £2 million. No-one, however was prosecuted, though the public inquiry which followed found various people guilty of negligence and foolishness.  

Coming at a moment in British history between the Georgian and Victorian ages, the stagecoach and the railway, the demise of the medieval city of London and the birth of the modern one, it is easy to load the great fire of 1834 with a wider historical significance. Later commentators have seen it as symbolic of the constitutional changes brought about by the Great Reform Act of 1832, but at the time people were more likely to have seen it as a judgement from God for the passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, against which Charles Dickens – a parliamentary reporter at the time of the fire – railed in Oliver Twist.

This piece is a revised version of the article ‘The Fire of 1834’ by Dr Caroline Shenton, author of ‘The Day Parliament Burned Down‘, originally posted on historyofparliamentonline.org.

The devastating fire at the Palace of Westminster on 16 October 1834 made the House of Commons chamber in the former St. Stephen’s Chapel unusable. The need to prorogue Parliament a week later – amid the still smouldering ruins – prompted makeshift arrangements for both the Commons and the Lords. The small number of MPs who attended gathered in one of the surviving Lords committee rooms, before going to meet the peers in what had been the House of Lords library. A further prorogation in the Lords library took place on 18 December 1834.

By the time Parliament reassembled in February 1835, the Commons and the Lords had both been provided with far more adequate temporary accommodation, which in the case of the Commons would be in use for the next 17 years. This was rather longer than anticipated, due to the delays which beset the building of the new Palace of Westminster designed by Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin. Some of these delays were exacerbated by the difficulties of constructing new buildings on a site still being occupied by MPs and peers in their temporary accommodation.

In the wake of the 1834 fire, the possibility of moving MPs and peers elsewhere was discussed, and several alternative locations were mooted, including St. James’s Palace, the Banqueting House in Whitehall, or Exeter Hall, a large public meeting venue on the Strand. William IV offered the recently renovated Buckingham Palace, which he apparently disliked and never moved into, as a possible solution. There were, however, strong objections to this. Its location was considered a major disadvantage: one London newspaper described it as ‘quite out of the way of all business – inconvenient of access’. In addition, it would require a substantial amount of internal remodelling to suit the requirements of parliamentarians, a process which would mean undoing much of the work recently completed at significant public expense. The government tactfully resisted the king’s attempt to foist Buckingham Palace on them.

Instead, plans to rehome MPs and peers at Westminster were rapidly drawn up by Sir Robert Smirke, an architect connected with the Office of Woods and Forests, who had been overseeing repairs to Westminster Hall when the fire took place. The House of Commons would use the building previously occupied by the House of Lords as its chamber, while the upper House was displaced into the Painted Chamber. These rooms had both been damaged by the fire and required considerable renovation work, but this began swiftly. Scaffolding was in place on the interior and exterior walls of the former House of Lords less than two weeks after the fire, in preparation for its conversion into temporary accommodation for MPs. By early November, between 300 and 400 workmen were on site roofing the two temporary chambers.

On 19 February 1835, when Parliament assembled at Westminster after a change of government – Viscount Melbourne’s Whig ministry had been replaced by Sir Robert Peel’s Conservative administration – and a general election, the temporary accommodation was ready. This speedy construction was aided by working at night, the use of prefabricated timber and iron girders, and short-cuts such as papier mâché for the ornamental mouldings. The Times gave ‘the highest credit’ to Smirke, who within the limited space allocated had provided ‘accommodation to a much greater extent than could … have been anticipated’.

The temporary Commons chamber now included the space which had been behind the throne for the king’s robing room when this building had been the House of Lords. At the opposite end of the House, space was taken out for the lobby, which was made considerably larger than that formerly used by the Lords. The strangers’ gallery was erected above this lobby, roughly where the gallery of the Lords had been, and ‘spacious galleries’ for members were erected on the two long sides of the building.

One ‘most important’ feature, according to The Times, which it had not been possible to incorporate within the confined space of the pre-1834 Commons chamber, was a dedicated reporters’ gallery above the Speaker’s chair, with its own separate entrance. In the old chamber, reporters had been allocated the back row of the strangers’ gallery, but often found themselves jostling with members of the public for seats. Their new gallery recognised the growing significance of the press in reporting on parliamentary proceedings.

Initial reactions to the temporary Commons chamber were, like that of The Times, generally positive. The Sun described it as ‘perhaps one of the most elegant specimens of taste’, noting the oak seats covered with green Spanish leather, and the ‘simple but most graceful elegance’ of the galleries. While its plainness led some later observers to compare it to ‘a railway station’, ‘a Primitive Methodist chapel’, ‘a hideous barn’ or ‘a wooden shanty’, its ‘conspicuously neat and simple’ style was widely regarded as an advantage. As one guide to London observed, the lack of ornamentation and draperies showed that this was ‘a place of business’.

The temporary chamber also had the major benefit of being able to accommodate a greater number of MPs than their previous one. According to a statement in the Commons in May 1850, it had room for 456 MPs (including in the galleries), in contrast with the 387 who could find a seat in the old chamber. John Cam Hobhouse, who as First Commissioner of Woods and Forests in the Melbourne ministry had been involved with planning the temporary accommodation, recorded in his diary on the opening day of the 1835 Parliament that he ‘was much pleased with what I had some right to call my new temporary House of Commons’. The MP for Bath, John Arthur Roebuck, declared that ‘compared with the old, ugly place, it is a beautiful and commodious room’. The diarist Charles Greville felt that MPs had got the better side of the bargain when it came to their temporary accommodation, contrasting their ‘very spacious and convenient’ chamber with the ‘wretched dog-hole’ provided for the Lords. The temporary Commons was not without its flaws, however, and there were alterations in subsequent years to improve its acoustics, ventilation and lighting.

In addition, questions were raised about the costs of the temporary accommodation. In June 1835, the Commons was asked to approve expenditure of £30,000 for the temporary buildings and £14,000 for ‘furniture and other necessary articles’. The latter was deemed ‘scandalously extravagant’ by one MP, who protested that ‘the country was called upon to pay upwards of 10,000l. for nothing but a parcel of deal tables and a few rusty old chairs’. The ‘utter absurdity’ of money being ‘squandered’ on temporarily patching up parts of the old Palace, on a site which would need to be built on as work on the new Palace progressed, was highlighted in the press. One Warwickshire newspaper drew an unfavourable comparison between the £28,000 cost of Birmingham’s new town hall, a building large enough to hold the members of both Houses, and the expenditure at Westminster. Allegations that this was ‘a job’ by Smirke were given added fuel by the fact that one of the two main contractors for the temporary accommodation, Messrs. Samuel Baker & Son, were related to Smirke by marriage.

As the temporary accommodation – not only the Commons chamber, but other facilities such as the committee rooms – continued to evolve and to require repair and maintenance over the next 17 years, the costs grew. In 1848, a select committee reported that £185,248 had so far been spent on temporary accommodation for the Lords and the Commons, ‘of which very little will be available for future service’. It argued that this ongoing expenditure was one reason to accelerate the completion of the new Palace. It would be another three years, however, before preparations were finally made in August 1851 to demolish the temporary Commons chamber.

Further reading:

C. Shenton, The Day Parliament Burned Down (2012)

J. Mordaunt Crook & M. H. Port, The History of the King’s Works. Volume VI 1782-1851 (1973)

See also this post by Rebekah Moore which discusses the temporary Commons.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on the Victorian Commons website on 28 October 2022, written by Dr Kathryn Rix.

In 1760 Thomas Worsley of Hovingham, a close friend of George III’s favourite, the earl of Bute, penned a letter to his friend and patron insisting on his family’s antiquity. In their possession, he claimed, were ‘authentic documents of coming over with William the Conquerer’. Worsley’s concern to prove that he was no johnny-come-lately had originally been seen when he was appointed to the privy chamber back in the 1730s, but he was still clearly concerned to emphasise his suitability at the time of his appointment as surveyor general of the king’s works (thanks to Bute).

He had nothing to worry about. The Worsleys were an old family, who could trace their ownership of estates in Lancashire to at least the 14th century. Another branch of the family, ultimately settled in Hampshire (and on the Isle of Wight), produced a parliamentary dynasty of their own.

Supporting Thomas Worsley’s assertion of descent from a companion of William the Conqueror were accounts in ‘ancient chronicles’ recording the family’s progenitor as the giant Sir Elias de Workesley, who had followed Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy, on ‘crusade’. The 1533 Visitation of Lancashire referred to this character as Elias, surnamed Gigas on account of his massive proportions, and suggested he was a contemporary of William I.

It took some time for the northern Worsleys to establish themselves but by the 15th century a number of distinguished figures had already emerged. The marriage of Seth Worsley to Margaret Booth linked the family to two archbishops of York, Margaret’s uncles, William Booth (archbishop 1452-64) and Lawrence Booth (1476-80). Their son, William, later became dean of St Paul’s Cathedral and towards the end of his life became caught up in the Perkin Warbeck conspiracy, for which he was sent to the Tower.

William Worsley may have conspired against Henry VII, but by the 16th century other members of the family had managed to establish themselves on the fringes of the Tudor court in the retinue of the earl of Derby and it seems to have been thanks to the 3rd earl (Edward Stanley) that Sir Robert Worsley was returned to Parliament in 1553 as knight of the shire for Lancashire. Nine years earlier, he had been knighted at Leith in recognition of his services in the English army. Worsley’s return in 1553 seems to have been somewhat accidental, only occurring as a result of a by-election after one of the other recently elected members had declared himself too ill to serve. By becoming one of the Lancashire knights of the shire, Worsley was following in the footsteps of his father-in-law, Thurstan Tyldesley, who had been elected to the same seat in 1547.

Sir Robert’s son, another Robert, continued the family tradition of following the Derbys by attaching himself to the retinue of the 4th earl (Henry Stanley). A passionate Protestant, as keeper of the gaol at Salford he had numerous recusant (Catholic) prisoners in his care, whom he tried to persuade away from their faith by organising time dedicated to reading from the Bible. How successful that policy was is uncertain, but he found the burden of his role intolerable and by the end of his life he had lost all of his principal estates in Lancashire. Like his father, he seems to have owed his election to Parliament to his patron, Derby, though in his case he was returned for the Cornish borough of Callington.

The best part of a century passed before another Worsley was returned to the Commons. In the interim, having lost their original estates, the family had relocated to Hovingham, near Malton in North Yorkshire. The manor had been acquired by Sir Robert Worsley in 1563 from Sir Thomas Gerard, and the connection was reinforced by the subsequent marriage of the younger Robert to Gerard’s daughter, Elizabeth. In 1685, it was one of the Hovingham Worsleys, Thomas (great-great-grandson of Robert and Elizabeth), who succeeded in being returned for Parliament, where he proved to be ‘totally inactive’.

Inactive he may have been, but this did not prevent him from making his views clear to the lord lieutenant when he was faced with the ‘Three Questions’, framed to tease out opposition to James II’s policies. In response to them he insisted that he would ‘go free into the House, and give my vote as my judgment and reason shall direct when I hear the debates’. This was not at all the response required by the king’s officials, and he was removed from his local offices. He regained them shortly after at the Revolution but it was not until 1698 that he was re-elected to Parliament, again for Malton. In 1712 he was removed from local office again, this time probably on account of his Whiggery.

The older Thomas lived to see the Hanoverian accession, which he doubtless welcomed. Three years before that his son (another Thomas) had been returned to Parliament as one of the Members for Thirsk, after failed attempts in 1708 and 1710. This Thomas Worsley also seems to have played little or no role in the Commons. This was perhaps ironic, given that his marriage to Mary Frankland linked him directly to Oliver Cromwell. Efforts by his father to secure him a government post through the patronage of the earl of Carlisle came to nothing.

The trio of Thomas Worsleys in Parliament was completed by the election for Orford of the second Thomas’s son in 1761. It was this Thomas Worsley, the friend of Bute, who had been so concerned to prove his family’s antiquity. Although he was to sit first for Orford and then (like his forebear, Robert) for Callington, Parliament was not Thomas’s passion. Rather, his interests lay in equestrianism, collecting and architecture. His true claim to fame was rebuilding the family seat at Hovingham, creating the elegant Georgian house that endures to this day, but his dedication to horseflesh was equally strong and he seems to have looked out for suitable mounts for his contacts, the king among them. Writing to Sir James Lowther, 5th bt. (future earl of Lonsdale) in 1763, he mentioned trying out one of Lowther’s horses in front of the king and queen. They liked the animal, but concluded it was not ‘strong enough to carry [the king’s] weight’. [HMC Lonsdale, 132]

Thomas Worsley died in December 1778 at his London residence in Scotland Yard. [Morning Chronicle, 15 Dec. 1778] Just a few months before, he had been contacted by the duke of Ancaster, the lord great chamberlain, requiring him to see to the repair of the House of Lords, which was reported to be ‘in bad condition’. [PA, LGC/5/1, f. 279] By then, he was probably in no fit state to oversee the work.

This Thomas seems to have been the last member of his family to show much interest in national politics until the 20th century. His eldest son, another Thomas, had died four years before him, leaving the inheritance to a younger son, Edward. In 1838 Edward’s nephew, Sir William Worsley, was created a baronet but his interests appear to have been largely confined to his immediate surroundings in North Yorkshire. The 4th baronet was a talented cricketer, serving as captain of Yorkshire, as well as president of the MCC. It was his son, Sir Marcus Worsley, 5th bt., who finally broke the family duck and returned to Parliament, first as MP for Keighley and latterly for Chelsea. In November 1969 he presented a bill to encourage the preservation of collections of manuscripts by controlling and regulating their export. His other chief preoccupation was as one of the church commissioners.

The late duchess of Kent was Sir Marcus’s younger sister. She continued the family’s long tradition of interest in sport (in her case tennis) and quiet dedication to their locality.

RDEE

Further reading
Estate and Household Accounts of William Worsley, Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral 1479-1497 (Richard III & Yorkist Trust and London Record Society, 2004), ed. H. Kleineke and S. Hovland
VCH Yorkshire North Riding, volume one
Visitation of Lancashire and a part of Cheshire, 1533, ed. William Langton (Chetham Soc. 1876)

The history of parliamentary reporting in the 19th century has two connected strands: the history of Hansard, and the history of reporting by the newspaper press, whose accounts of Commons debates formed the basis for Hansard’s volumes for much of the nineteenth century. One interesting way to trace the growing significance of the press in reporting proceedings in the Commons is through changes to the use of space within Parliament’s buildings.

From 1771 onwards, press reporting of Commons debates had been tolerated, even though it technically remained a breach of privilege to report what was said in the chamber. However, the reporters had to compete with members of the public for space in the strangers’ gallery. On a notable occasion in May 1803, public interest in a speech by William Pitt on the war with France was so great that the reporters were unable to get seats and some could not even find standing room. In protest, the press decided not to report Pitt’s speech. This prompted the Speaker to arrange with the Serjeant at Arms that in future the reporters would be admitted to their usual seats in the back row of the gallery ahead of the public. They paid a fee of three guineas per session for this.

The old Commons chamber was notoriously cramped and the gallery was no exception, particularly as the press presence there grew. With increased public interest in reading reports of debates, there were twice as many reporters using the gallery in 1833 as in 1803. The gallery’s most famous occupant was probably the young Charles Dickens, who reported in the early 1830s for his uncle’s publication, the Mirror of Parliament, a rival to Hansard which appeared from 1828 until 1841. Dickens also wrote for the newspapers, including the True Sun and the Morning Chronicle.  He later recollected having ‘worn my knees by writing on them on the old back row of the old gallery of the House of Commons’.

Like many fellow reporters, Dickens took notes during his ‘turn’ in the gallery using shorthand. The length of turns ranged from a few minutes to an hour. It depended on the debate’s importance, the number of reporters each publication had available and how close it was to the newspaper’s printing deadline. With few facilities for them in the Commons, reporters typically walked the mile or so back to their newspaper offices to write up their reports. This provided a convenient excuse for a Times reporter accused by the Irish leader Daniel O’Connell in June 1832 of misreporting one of his speeches. As well as blaming the chamber’s poor acoustics, the reporter claimed that his notebook had been damaged by rain while he was walking back to his office. O’Connell responded that this was

‘the most extraordinary shower of rain I ever heard of, for it not only washed out the speech I made from your note-book, but washed in another and an entirely different one’.

The destruction of much of the old Palace of Westminster by fire in October 1834 provided an opportunity to remodel Parliament’s facilities. MPs temporarily moved into the chamber previously used by the House of Lords. A dedicated reporters’ gallery with its own separate entrance was created within this space in 1835. Unlike the gallery in the old chamber, which had been opposite the Speaker’s chair, the reporters’ gallery in the temporary chamber was behind the Speaker’s chair. This meant that rather than seeing MPs’ backs as they turned towards the Speaker, reporters would now see their faces, making it easier to work out who was addressing the House and what was being said. Facilities for the reporters were also enhanced by the provision of ‘a desk or a slab in front’ of them for their notebooks.

This improved accommodation for the press provided a practical demonstration of its perceived importance – particularly in the wake of the 1832 Reform Act – in communicating parliamentary proceedings beyond the confines of the Commons chamber. As one contemporary observer, Charles Greville, remarked, it was

‘a sort of public and avowed homage to opinion, and a recognition of the right of the people to know through the medium of the press all that passes within those walls’.

There were, however, some teething troubles. The position of the reporters’ gallery meant that almost the whole of the front bench on each side of the chamber below could not be seen. In addition, the presence of a screen, topped with a canopy, between their gallery and the Speaker’s chair meant that reporters sometimes found it difficult to hear the Speaker putting the question for debate. This left them struggling to work out what the ensuing discussion was about. These issues were rectified when alterations were made in 1836 to improve the temporary chamber’s ventilation and acoustics. The reporters’ gallery was lowered and brought forward, and the obstructive screen and canopy were replaced with a lower screen. This meant that the Speaker was ‘completely within the view and hearing of the reporters’.

As with other features adopted in the temporary chamber, such as the second division lobby and the ladies’ gallery, the separate reporters’ gallery also became a feature of the new Commons chamber designed by Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin. Recognising its importance, the former Conservative prime minister Sir Robert Peel and his Whig successor Lord John Russell both personally checked the acoustics in the reporters’ gallery when the new chamber had its first trial run on 30 May 1850. The ‘immense loftiness’ of the new chamber’s lavishly decorated ceiling prompted concerns from the press about the ease of hearing and reporting debates. One of the key modifications after this trial run was to insert a false ceiling under Barry’s carved and gilded roof to improve the acoustics. Thus, as one historian of the reporters’ gallery has noted, MPs ‘willingly spoiled the architectural beauty of their House so that the reporters might hear their debates’.

Although the acoustics within the chamber may have been enhanced for their benefit, the reporters only had limited facilities outside the chamber. Thomas Wemyss Reid, who became the Leeds Mercury’s London correspondent in 1867, described the

‘two wretched little cabins, ill-lit and ill-ventilated, immediately behind the Gallery, which were used for “writing out”. But one of these was occupied exclusively by the Times staff, and the other was so small that it could not accommodate a quarter of the number of reporters’.

From late afternoon onwards, reporters were also allowed to use one of the Commons committee rooms for writing up their reports.

The other facilities for the press at Westminster were somewhat lacking. Reid remembered ‘a cellar-like apartment in the yard below, where men used to resort to smoke’, and a ‘filthy’ ante-room to the reporters’ gallery, where Mr Wright provided refreshments for the reporters. Wright ‘always had a bottle of whisky on tap, a loaf or two of stale bread, and a most nauseous-looking ham’. Reid recollected with disgust the widely believed story that each night, Wright took the ham home ‘to his modest abode in Lambeth … wrapped in a large red bandana which he had been flourishing, and using, during the evening, and for greater security placed it under his bed’. Whether or not this was true, Reid avoided the ham, sticking to eggs and tea.

Reid was among the editors and reporters who gave evidence to an 1878 select committee on parliamentary reporting. Its recommendations led to a substantial expansion of the reporters’ gallery in 1881. Space was taken from the members’ gallery to provide a greater number of seats for reporters, and for the first time, representatives of the provincial press were allocated their own places within the reporters’ gallery. In addition, making use of rooms previously occupied by the Deputy Assistant Serjeant at Arms, Colonel Forester, who died in November 1881, the reporters were provided with ‘a commodious and well-lighted suite of writing, dining and smoking rooms’. These changes to the fabric of Parliament to facilitate the reporters’ work prompted Reid to reflect that ‘the status of the Press is changed indeed’.

Further reading:

Charles Gratton, The gallery: a sketch of the history of parliamentary reporting and reporters (1860)

S. J. Reid (ed.), Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 (1905)

Michael MacDonagh, The reporters’ gallery (1913)

Andrew Sparrow, Obscure scribblers: a history of parliamentary reporting (2003)

The editor of our House of Commons, 1832-1945 project, Dr Philip Salmon, appeared on this BBC documentary about Dickens in Parliament.

Harriet Grote (1792-1878) was one of the most important British politicians of the 1830s. As I’ve discussed in my previous articles, she had been a key figure among London’s intellectual radicals during the previous decade, before embracing national politics, alongside her husband, George Grote (1794-1871), during the reform crisis of 1830-32.

In the aftermath of George’s election as MP for London in 1832, Harriet wasted little time establishing herself at Westminster. At a time when women weren’t allowed to vote or sit in Parliament (or for that matter play any formal, public role in political life), Harriet became a highly influential figure behind the scenes at Westminster. One of the first things that she did was to establish herself as the hostess of 34 Parliament Street, which quickly became a political hub for reformers and radicals during the 1833 parliamentary session.

The 1832 election (the first election after the 1832 Reform Act) returned one of the most radical Houses of Commons in UK history. When Parliament convened in January 1833 around a third of Westminster’s 658 MPs described themselves as either Reformers, Radicals or Repealers, as distinct from the governing Whigs or opposition Conservatives.

One of the key political issues that served to unite these radicals and reformers (or the ‘popular party’ as Harriet described them) was their demand for additional electoral reforms beyond those granted by the 1832 Reform Act. Top on their list was the introduction of secret voting or ‘the ballot’, which it was hoped would put an end to illegitimate aristocratic and landlord influence at elections.

In January 1833 Harriet and George hosted discussions among Parliament’s reformers and radicals (including veteran radical MPs Henry Warburton and Joseph Hume) to identify who would spearhead the issue in Parliament. With Harriet ‘joining most cordially in the counsel’ it was agreed that her husband George ‘should be the person to undertake the ballot question in the ensuing session of Parliament’.

As I will discuss in a future blog, Harriet was one of the chief organisers of the popular, though ultimately futile, national campaign for the ballot during the 1830s. In the immediate context of 1833, however, it provided her with an opportunity to announce herself to Parliament and to extend her network of political contacts.

One of the most important physical sites of women’s engagement in the House of Parliament prior to the fire of 1834 was an informal women’s viewing gallery above the Commons, often referred to as the ‘ventilator’. Harriet preferred to call it ‘The Lantern’, observing that it allowed for ‘ten or twelve persons’ to be ‘so placed as to hear, and to a certain extent see, what passed in the body of the House’.

In preparation for George’s impending parliamentary motion on the ballot, in February 1833 Harriet ‘made an experiment’ and attended the ventilator for the first time. ‘Going with Fanny [Frances] Ord’, the wife of the MP for Newport, William Henry Ord, Harriet reported that ‘one hears very well, but seeing is difficult, being distant from the members, and the apertures in the ventilator being small and grated’.

When the night eventually arrived for George to introduce his first ballot motion, Harriet effectively held court in the ventilator before hosting a soiree at their Parliament Street residence.

After listening intently to George’s hour-long speech, she described how ‘immediately afterwards’ William Molesworth (MP for East Cornwall) ‘joined me upstairs, in the roof of the House’ and ‘poured out his admiration of [George] Grote’s performance’. In what soon became an annual tradition (on account of George’s repeated parliamentary motions for the ballot), ‘the whole corps of Radicals’ then descended on 34 Parliament Street ‘to come and pour out their congratulations’ for their efforts in promoting the cause.

The Grotes’ association with the ballot instantly elevated them to the forefront of British radical politics. This position was cemented over the following year by Harriet’s unceasing efforts to forge alliances with those she identified as the most important ‘respectable Rads’ at Westminster and beyond.

Harriet quickly cultivated an inner circle of leading politicians, thinkers, journalists and lawyers, who she invited to extended weekend political salons at the Grotes’ ‘country residence’ in Dulwich Wood. As well as the aforementioned Henry Warburton and Joseph Hume, senior radical dignitaries such as Francis Place might be found there on a Saturday evening talking political strategy with Harriet and George in the company of rising new MPs such as John Arthur Roebuck, Charles Buller and William Molesworth, the editor of the Spectator, Robert Rintoul, the writer Sarah Austin, or the young utilitarian, John Stuart Mill.  

She was even willing to defy social convention and drive her guests back into London after their stays, offering another opportunity to extend her political influence. In one particularly revealing passage, in 1834 Harriet recalled:

driving my phaeton to London one morning [from Dulwich Wood], with Molesworth by my side, C[harles] Buller and Roebuck in the seat behind. During the whole six miles, these three vied with each other as to who should make the most outrageous Radical motions in the House [of Commons], the two behind standing up and talking, sans intermission, all the way, to Molesworth and myself.

Unfortunately for Harriet her efforts to organise Westminster’s reformers and radicals did not translate into immediate political results. Parliament itself, she lamented, still contained a majority of ‘men so lamentably deficient in patriotism and purity of principle’ that substantive change did not appear immediately likely. These ‘deficient’ men included the Whigs and the Conservatives, who had effectively formed an alliance of the centre to frustrate radical policy, and the ‘coarse and violent’ (in Harriet’s words) leader of the Irish Repealers, Daniel O’Connell, whom she never trusted.

Harriet’s hope that the Whig government of the 2nd Earl Grey might support her radical ambitions was quashed within a single Parliament. It was for this reason that she relished one small political victory in June 1834, when her husband, together with Henry Ward, MP for St. Albans, introduced a crucial vote over the funding of the Irish Church. The vote prompted the resignation of two cabinet ministers. A month later the Grey ministry would resign.

The ‘rupture of the Cabinet on the Irish Church question, has put us in great spirits’, Harriet informed her sister. What made this moment so positive for Harriet was that in voting against the Whig government, previously subservient MPs appeared to be acting on behalf of the people, rather than aristocratic, ministerial self-interest. The vote ‘was a remarkable proof’, Harriet wrote, of

how powerful the popular party are in that House, for the men who usually support this Government were forced from fear of their constituents to abandon the Ministers.

In my next article I’ll turn my attention to Harriet’s attempts to guide ‘the popular party’ following the 1835 election…

To read part four of Martin’s article series click here

Further Reading

S. Richardson, ‘A Regular Politician in Breeches: The Life and Work of Harriet Lewin Grote’, in K. Demetrious (ed.), Brill’s Companion to George Grote and the Classical Tradition (2014)

A. Galvin-Elliot, ‘An Artist in the Attic: Women and the House of Commons in the Early-Nineteenth Century‘, Victorian Commons (2018)

Lady Eastlake, Mrs Grote: A Sketch (1880)

J. Hamburger, ‘Grote [née Lewin], Harriet’, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com

H. Grote, Collected Papers: In Prose and Verse 1842-1862 (1862)

M. L. Clarke, George Grote: A Biography (1962)

H. Grote (ed.), Posthumous Papers: Comprising Selections from Familiar Correspondence (1874)

This is an updated version of an article originally published on the Victorian Commons website on 29 September 2021, written by Dr Martin Spychal.

The 1832 election introduced Harriet Grote (1792-1878) to several of the traditional, and not so traditional, avenues through which a politician’s wife could engage in nineteenth-century electoral politics. As I discussed in my previous article, Harriet had established herself as a central figure among London’s intellectual radicals during the 1820s, before being thrown into the world of Westminster politics during the reform crisis of 1830-32.

At the 1832 election her husband, the radical reformer and banker, George Grote (1794-1871), stood for election for the first time. He came forward for the City of London, which with over 18,000 voters, was the UK’s largest constituency. Due to the size of its electorate, canvassing in London took on a different character to most other constituencies. A huge bureaucratic machine was established, with Harriet and George operating as figureheads overseeing campaign workers.

Harriet described their closest friend and George’s banking partner, William George Prescott, as ‘the life and soul of our committee’, and remarked how at one point ‘seventy clerks’ were ‘at work all day and night’ at the King’s Head Tavern, 25 Poultry, running the campaign. In private, Harriet fulfilled the unpaid and generally unnoticed secretarial roles attached to being a politician’s wife, writing speeches, responding to correspondence and overseeing George’s schedule, or as she termed it the ‘duty of arranging his existence’.

During the election Harriet was also asked to fulfil one of the more traditional tasks associated with the politician’s wife: supplying the rosettes for George and his election team. She described how at the declaration thirty of George’s stewards ‘wore my colours in their button-holes, made by myself, a rosette of crimson satin – their especial request’.

The nomination and declaration for the City of London took place at London’s Guildhall. As it was not customary for women to stand on the hustings, Harriet was able to spectate proceedings from a ‘peep-box’ or ‘eyrie’ on one of the upper balconies of the Guildhall. In her journal she recalled: 

the scene below will never be effaced from my mind. About 4,500 electors studded the hall in dense order. The hustings was occupied by the candidates and their trains, the Sheriffs presiding in full costume. I thought I should have sunk down when I saw my “Potter” [George Grote] step forth to the rostrum when his turn arrived, amid a roar of applause, a waving of hats and shouts of tremendous nature that the vaulted roof rang again.

George was elected at the top of the poll with over 8,000 votes in December 1832, the largest recorded for any candidate at the 1832 election. This made him, in Harriet’s view, the ‘senior member for the capital of the Empire’.

In contrast to later years this was a moment of intense political opportunity and excitement for both Harriet and George, who felt that the political momentum was finally behind their reformist and utilitarian ideals. In her journal she reflected ‘I doubt if ever again I shall experience the intense happiness of those inspiring moments’. She continued: ‘George is in good health, thank God, and never has the ‘dolors’ now – nor glums’. Both dared to dream that the British public were ‘echoing the sentiments which for years we had privately cherished, but which were now first fearlessly avowed’.

With the parliamentary session about to commence Harriet revived her role as the influential Threadneedle Street hostess at the heart of Westminster. In doing so she skilfully co-opted the aristocratic model of the political hostess, traditionally associated with the likes of Lady Holland or the Countess of Derby. Harriet, however, stamped her own radical middle-class identity on the hostess model, one that was fit for the exciting new world of reformed politics.

In January 1833 she moved into newly rented lodgings with George at 34 Parliament Street, above what was then Oakley’s grocers and is now the Houses of Parliament Gift Shop and Boots. She wrote to her sister ahead of the opening of Parliament, revealing her plan to turn their flat into one of Westminster’s parliamentary and intellectual hubs:

We have got some excellent apartments in Westminster, the corner of Parliament Street and Bridge Street, handsome drawing-room, anteroom and dining room communicating, good bedroom, another bedroom for George – using it as his dressing-room or to sleep in if I am not well, rooms for maids and men over that, nice people below and everything we could wish as a lodging – only £8 a week for six months, and we are lucky to get it. Here we shall be most of the session save Saturdays and Sundays – coteries of friends, political and other, and as much intellectual society as the world affords.

Her mother visited their new residence during the opening weeks of the parliamentary session. She confirmed that Harriet’s plans were coming to fruition: ‘while I was there I met many members flocking in with all the news’.

One of Harriet’s first ‘soirees’ took place on 13 February 1833, which was a night of light business in the House. Harriet assured her sister, who she was trying to convince to visit Parliament, that it was a far from male-dominated affair: ‘the Waddingtons in full force … E[liza] Shireff came with girls; also Mrs. [Sarah] Austin, Mrs. [Mary] Gaskell of Yorkshire, and a bevy of MPs, and John [Stuart] Mill to top up with’.

Harriet’s choice to live with George at Westminster, rather than remain at their residence in Dulwich, led to mutterings that she was encroaching on the bounds of acceptable behaviour for an MP’s wife. It was usual practice for male MPs without London property to live alone at their clubs or hotels during the parliamentary week.

The election agent Joseph Parkes warned Harriet that some suspected her of ‘conceit’ at seeking to exert influence over radical politics as the hostess of 34 Parliament Street. While these accusations were probably close to reality, Harriet couldn’t admit as much in polite society. Accordingly, she brushed off Parkes’s concerns by playing the dutiful wife card, assuring him that:

My chief object in taking a lodging in Parliament Street is to be enabled to look after my man … I shall “minister” to G[eorge] and when not wanted, shall tend my flowers and lead my rational course at D[ulwich] wood. My conceit, however monstrous it may sound, is not what is understood by conceit. I live with one so much my master, that the true feeling of “conceit” is effectually stopped out. I am made sensible of my inferiority most days in the week.

As we will see in my next article, Harriet proved herself more than equal to her husband and his parliamentary colleagues. She also spared little thought for fulfilling the role of subservient parliamentary spouse…

To read part three of Martin’s article series click here

Further Reading

S. Richardson, ‘A Regular Politician in Breeches: The Life and Work of Harriet Lewin Grote’, in K. Demetrious (ed.), Brill’s Companion to George Grote and the Classical Tradition (2014)

K. Rix, MP of the Month: Daniel Gaskell (1782-1875), Victorian Commons

J. Davey, Mary, Countess of Derby, and the Politics of Victorian Britain (2019)

J. Hamburger, ‘Grote [née Lewin], Harriet’, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com

Lady Eastlake, Mrs Grote: A Sketch (1880)

H. Grote, Collected Papers: In Prose and Verse 1842-1862 (1862)

H. Grote (ed.), Posthumous Papers: Comprising Selections from Familiar Correspondence (1874)

M. L. Clarke, George Grote: A Biography (1962)

This is an updated version of an article originally published on the Victorian Commons website on 24 May 2021, written by Dr Martin Spychal.

Bloomsbury Square, and its immediate surroundings, have long been associated with prominent political figures. In 1706, several peers had residences in the square, notably the (2nd) duke of Bedford and the earls of Northampton and Chesterfield. Close neighbours residing in Great Russell Street, were the duke of Montagu (whose house later became the British Museum), the earl of Thanet and Lord Haversham, and John Hough, at that point bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. By 1727, things had changed somewhat. Montagu was still living in Great Russell Street, now joined by William Baker, bishop of Bangor, shortly after translated to Norwich. But Northampton’s heir had left Bloomsbury Square for Grosvenor Street, though another house had been taken by the earl of Nottingham. [Jones, ‘London Topography’]

Jump forward half a century, and Bloomsbury Square remained a place closely associated with the aristocracy. It was still home to the (5th) duke of Bedford and he had been joined by one of the foremost legal minds of the time: William Murray, earl of Mansfield, who had moved there from Lincoln’s Inn Fields a few years previously. According to Mansfield’s biographer, the square ‘conveyed a delightful atmosphere of leisure and repose, where often the only sounds came from the twittering and chirping of birds’. [Poser, 167] In June 1780, this ‘delightful’ haven was to be turned on its head and Mansfield’s residence was to become one of the principal targets of the Gordon rioters, who flocked to the square on the night of 6/7 June determined to torch the place.

Much has been written about the Gordon riots, which brought London (and other cities) to a virtual standstill for several days in June 1780. The immediate cause was the Protestant Association’s petition calling for the repeal of the 1778 Catholic Relief Act. Having gathered in St George’s Fields on Friday 2 June, members of the Association, led by their president, Lord George Gordon, processed to Parliament to present the petition. While things had begun calmly enough, in the course of the day more unruly elements flocked to Westminster and MPs and members of the Lords found themselves besieged within their chambers.

Thus, what began as a relatively focused cause was soon taken over by general lawlessness, and as Bob Shoemaker and Tim Hitchcock have argued persuasively, many of those involved in the later stages of the rioting had as their target the criminal justice system itself and were far less driven by concerns about religion. [Hitchcock and Shoemaker, 346, 349-50] Consequently, several prisons were attacked and the inmates released; lawyers in and around the inns of court went in fear of assault (or worse) and prominent judges, like Mansfield, became very obvious targets. The fact that Mansfield had also been vocal in his support of the Catholic Relief Act made him doubly susceptible.

Mansfield had been singled out for special treatment even on that first day. Arriving at Westminster, his carriage had been attacked and he had had to be rescued by the archbishop of York. After the day’s proceedings were adjourned, Mansfield was forced to make his way out of the Lords via a back door and travelled home by river as his coach had since been torn to pieces.

Over the next few days rioting gripped London. By Tuesday 6 June Mansfield’s nephew (and eventual heir) David, 7th Viscount Stormont, felt the need to advise the officer commanding the guards in London that he had received ‘reliable information’ that several houses were in need of additional protection, among them those of the marquess of Rockingham and Mansfield. [TNA, SP37/20/54, ff. 76-6] Despite Stormont’s efforts, Mansfield himself decided that too visible a military presence might only infuriate the crowd, so he requested the guards remain at a distance. It was a fatal mistake. When a band of rioters arrived outside Mansfield’s house on the night of 6/7 June, they found it undefended and set to work pulling down the railings before breaking into the house itself. There, they gave vent to all their destructive power, burning his library and gutting the building. Mansfield and Lady Mansfield only narrowly escaped, by using the back door onto Southampton Row.

Mansfield’s losses were significant. Consigned to the flames were his own legal notebooks, along with his library and pretty much the entire contents of the house. Efforts to save the building were stymied because when firefighters arrived on the scene, they refused to get involved until the soldiers (who had by then made themselves known) withdrew, in case they got caught in the middle of fighting between the crowd and the troops.

According to one paper, Mansfield’s losses amounted to £30,000, the library constituting a third of the total. [Morning Chronicle, 9 June 1780] Another paper attributed the destruction to Mansfield’s own ‘ill-judged lenity’, after he had ‘humanely requested [the troops] not fire upon the deluded wretches’. The same paper detailed some of the irreplaceable items that had been destroyed, including a portrait of Viscount Bolingbroke by the poet, Alexander Pope, ‘which, though not having the merit of a professed artist, was always esteemed a great likeness’. [Whitehall Evening Post, 10-13 June 1780]

The tragedy of the Gordon Riots and its impact on Bloomsbury Square did not end on 7 June. Precisely how many people were killed and injured in the rioting remains unclear, but among the rioters well over 300 were killed. Some troops were also among the dead, one of them a cavalrymen posted in Bloomsbury Square, who came off his horse and was finished off by the crowd. [Whitehall Evening Post, 8-10 June 1780] Retribution for some of those involved came quickly and within days there were numerous arrests. By the end of the month the first trials were underway.

As was so often the case, it was the very recognizable among the most marginalized who ended up being handed in. One such was John Gray, whose case has been written about extensively. A native of Taunton in Somerset, who had made his way to London, Gray was one of many on the fringes of society, eking out a living by feeding horses for hackney carriages. [London Courant, 24 July 1780] Although described as ‘a stout made man’, he appears to have had a clubfoot and to have needed a crutch to walk. He seems also to have had mental health issues. He stood out in the crowd taking part in pulling apart one of Mansfield’s outhouses and a few days later was arrested after being spotted trying to pick someone’s pocket.

Gray was convicted at the Old Bailey (https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/) and, in spite of a petition for mercy subscribed by several prominent Taunton residents, one of them the chaplain to Lord Bathurst, [TNA, [SP37/21/132, f. 250] and other recommendations that his case was one worthy of the king’s consideration, [TNA, SP37/21/91] the appeals for clemency were rejected. On Saturday 22 July, he was conveyed back to Bloomsbury Square with two others and hanged on a gallows positioned so that their last view was the remains of Mansfield’s burnt-out former residence.

RDEE

Further reading:
Clyve Jones, ‘The London Topography of the Parliamentary Elite: addresses for peers and bishops for 1706 and 1727-8’, London Topographical Record, xxix (2006)
Norman S. Poser, Lord Mansfield: Justice in the Age of Reason (2013)
Tim Hitchcock and Bob Shoemaker, London Lives: poverty, crime and the making of a modern city 1690-1800 (2015)