Fictitious Votes
At this time, only those who held freeholds of land had an entitlement in the Scottish county representative system. Many landowners, assisted by ingenious lawyers, created ‘titles’ to areas of land. These ‘titles’ did not confer any ownership of the land, but they did confer the right to vote in that county’s election. Such ‘titles’ were in demand among the professional classes who owned no land of their own, such as lawyers, bankers, and merchants, as they were thus able to participate in the Parliamentary process. These fictitious or ‘parchment’ votes resulted in a proliferation of voters, but many with no genuine stake in the county. The going rate in Dunbartonshire in 1821 was reckoned to be £1,400, and thus a lucrative scheme for landowners. When the subject was discussed in 1831, as part of Lord Grey’s proposed Scottish reform bill, it was stated that in Buteshire only two of the 19 enrolled freeholders owned any landed property in the county.
Although legislation was introduced to curb the manufacture of parchment votes, resourceful Scottish lawyers devised new ways of evading the sanction. In 1837, a Parliamentary Select Committee again investigated ‘fictitious votes’ and a number of Albany Street residents appear in the list of individuals holding such votes, including Hugh Bruce (Number 22), Robert Ogilvie (Number 53) and Thomas Johnstone (Number 37). Johnstone was listed as having such a vote for the County of Peebles, although he had no genuine stake in the county. The fact that Johnstone was a solicitor, and would become President of the Society of Solicitors in Scotland, did not deter him from participating in the corrupt system. The term for this abuse changed to ‘faggot voters’ and Henry and Charles Burt (Number 44), whose deceased father had been a High Constable of Edinburgh and a Commissioner of Police, were named in a newspaper article under the headline: ‘New Tory Faggots for Midlothian’. A caption that would be very much misconstrued today!
Lord Grey’s Reform Act of 1832 (painting marking the passing of Lord Grey’s Reform Act in Parliament by Sir George Hayter – collection National Portrait Gallery) was designed to end this practice, but slipshod drafting of the sections of the Act led to the manufacture of even more such votes. It was not until Third Reform Act in 1884 that the practice was fully ended by, instead, giving a vote to all men paying an annual land rental of £10 or holding land valued at £10. Of course, universal suffrage did not come until much later.