Yorkshire Almanac The transport of voters in the election of the registrar of deeds at Wakefield

12 May 1817: The transport of voters in the election of the registrar of deeds at Wakefield

Anne Lister. 1992. I Know My Own Heart. Ed. Helena Whitbread. New York: New York University Press. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

Monday 12 May [Halifax]
5 chaises, a stagecoach that commonly runs between Leeds & Halifax, the Blackpool mail (a long coach, so called in derision), the Wakefield car, a sort of tea-cart topped something in the same way as a sociable to keep off the rain, all passed here this morning, filled with voters for the Registrarship of Wakefield. The contending parties, Mr Frank Hawksworth & Mr Fenton Scott. The report of this evening is in favour of the former. 2 more chaises passed to Wakefield in the afternoon.

Order the book:

Subscribe to the free daily email:

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Something to say? Get in touch

Comment

Something to say? Get in touch

17 August 1821: Two slugicidal hedgehogs arrive by mail coach at Anne Lister’s in Halifax, sent by her lover in Market Weighton

19 August 1817: An encounter with John Oates of Halifax, autodidact optician

8 November 1817: Anne Lister’s uncle Joseph dies, and her aunt recounts a premonitory vision

23 January 1643: Thomas Fairfax, the Rider of the White Horse, captures Leeds from the Beast with the help of Psalm 68

8 June 1561: A York official explains why textile manufacturing has left his city for the West Riding

16 December 1722: Thomas Nettleton of Halifax recounts to James Jurin his success in inoculating against smallpox

18 December 1642: “Bradford quarter” is given to a Royalist besieger during the First Siege

11 April 1667: A hubristic Sam Mitchell impersonates a gypsy in a Halifax pub, and nemesis follows

30 May 1835: The (Tory-dominated) Leeds Corporation gives its assets to three cronies to prevent their being inherited by the new (Whiggish) town council created by the Municipal Corporations Act

Order the book:

Subscribe to the free daily email:

Comment

£7K was about £0.75m in May 2024 – chicken-feed for Covid-era embezzlers.

They were not the only beneficiaries:

When the functions of the late Corporation of Leeds were about to cease, by virtue of the Municipal Bill, the members voted to Mr. Adolphus jun., the son of the eminent barrister and Deputy Recorder of that Corporation, the sum of one hundred guineas, in testimony of their esteem, and as a small but grateful record of their estimation of his services. Mr. Adolphus refused to accept the tribute, excusing himself upon the plea that he could not ???? to himself the idea of allowing the last act of the corporation to be that of giving a sum of money to one of its legal advisers (Morning Post 1836/04/06)

The Spectator has a follow-up (Gale doesn’t have Leeds Mercury scans for 1836!):

The Solicitor-General has given his opinion, that the conduct of the old Leeds Corporation, in alienating their funds, was illegal and fraudulent, and that the seven thousand pounds may be recovered on an application to the Court of Chancery. We are sure the burgesses of Leeds will require their Council to institute proceedings for the recovery of the property without delay, if the old Corporation should have the audacity to persist in their wrongful act, and that the borough will support the Council in those proceedings.—Leeds Mercury.(Spectator 1836/04/09)

This was during the period of Whig rule nationally 1835-41 under Viscount Melbourne, and there is probably a Tory response to the Solicitor General somewhere. But what happened eventually? Were there sanctions for the guilty members of the Corporation? Who were they? For that at least John Mayhall has the answer:

LEEDS CORPORATE BODY, 1834-5.
MAYOR: Griffith Wright.
RECORDER: Charles Milner.
DEPUTY RECORDER: John Leycester Adolphus.
ALDERMEN:-Henry Hall, George Banks, Christopher Beckett, William Hey, Benjamin Sadler, Thomas Beckett, Thomas Blayds, Ralph Markland, Rt. William Dinsey Thorp, Richard Bramley, Joseph Robert Atkinson, William Perfect.
ASSISTANTS:-Jonathan Wilks, Joseph Ingham, John G. Uppleby, Fountain Brown, Michael Thomas Sadler, Joseph Henry Ridsdale, William Wilks, Joseph Mason Tennant, William Hey, junr., John Wilkinson, Charles Brown, William Waite, Benjamin Holroyd, William Osburn, junr., John Upton, William Gott, Thomas Motley, Francis Chorley, Robert Harrison, John Cawood, William Milnes, Thomas Charlesworth, George Hirst.
TOWN CLERK: James Nicholson.
CORONER: Robert Barr.
CHIEF CONSTABLE: Edward Read.
DEPUTY CONSTABLE: James Ingham.
SERJEANT AT MACE: George Hanson.
CLERK OF THE MARKETS, AND BILLET MASTER: James Fairclough.
BEADLE: J. Handley.
CAPTAIN OF THE WATCH. Benjamin Wool.
GAOLER: James Lancaster
TOWN’S CRIER: Benjamin Spencer.
(Mayhall 1860)