The Great Reform Act and beyond
The nutshell
In the 1800s, a set of laws called the Reform Acts gave the vote to more and more men. The Great Reform Act of 1832 made a start. Later acts in 1867 and 1884 widened the vote further.
Every fact on this page comes from UK Parliament and other non-partisan bodies. Each source tag — like Parl — opens where a fact comes from.
The basics
Before the reforms
In the early 1800s, only a small number of rich men could vote. Some tiny places still sent Members of Parliament, or MPs, to the House of Commons, while big new cities like Manchester had none. A place with hardly any voters that still sent an MP was called a rotten borough.
The Great Reform Act of 1832
In 1832, Parliament passed the Great Reform Act. The Act took seats away from the rotten boroughs and gave those seats to growing industrial towns such as Manchester and Birmingham.Parl It also let more men vote, and grew the number of voters by more than half. Even so, most men still could not vote, and no women could.
More men get the vote: 1867
The next big change came in 1867. A second Reform Act gave the vote to many more working men in the towns. UK Parliament records that this act doubled the number of voters in England and Wales, from one million to two million men.Parl
The vote reaches the countryside: 1884
In 1884, a third Reform Act gave the same right to men in the countryside. Farm workers could now vote on the same terms as men in the towns.Parl After 1884, UK Parliament says about 60 in every 100 men could vote.
What still had to change
Even after 1884, the House of Commons Library records that two in every five men still could not vote, and no woman could vote at all.HoC Full votes for women, and for almost every adult, came later, in 1918 and 1928. The topic on the history of UK democracy follows that story.
- The Great Reform Act of 1832 moved parliamentary seats to growing industrial towns such as Manchester and Birmingham, and ended tiny rotten boroughs like Old Sarum, according to UK Parliament
- The 1867 Reform Act doubled the electorate in England and Wales from one million to two million men, UK Parliament records
- The 1884 Reform Act gave the county vote to farm workers on the same terms as men in the towns, so that about 60 per cent of men could vote, according to UK Parliament
- Even after the 1832 Act, most adult men still could not vote, and the working classes were left out, according to UK Parliament
- The vote widened in slow steps over more than 50 years, from 1832 to 1884, rather than all at once
- No woman could vote in a general election under any of these acts, and even after 1884 two in every five men still could not vote, the House of Commons Library records
The deep end6 min
The unreformed system, and what 1832 changed
Before 1832, the right to vote in England and Wales rested on a patchwork of old local rules. According to UK Parliament, some rotten boroughs with only a handful of electors still returned MPs, while fast-growing towns such as Manchester and Birmingham had no MP at all. The Great Reform Act of 1832 set one borough-wide rule that gave the vote to adult men living in a home worth at least £10 a year in rent. It took seats from the rotten boroughs and gave those seats to the industrial towns.Parl UK Parliament records that the change grew the electorate by more than half, from about half a million to about three quarters of a million, and that it brought the middle classes of the big towns into political power while leaving the working classes without a vote.
1867: doubling the electorate
Pressure for further reform grew after 1832. The Second Reform Act of 1867 extended the borough vote to householders and lodgers who paid rent, which reached many working men in the towns for the first time. UK Parliament records that the 1867 Act doubled the electorate in England and Wales, from one million to two million men.Parl The county rules stayed tighter, so a working man in a town could now vote while a farm worker in the countryside often still could not.
1884: one rule for town and country
The Third Reform Act of 1884 closed much of that gap. According to UK Parliament, the 1884 Act set a uniform franchise across the country and brought the county vote into line with the 1867 rule for the boroughs, which extended the vote to farm workers in the countryside. UK Parliament records that after 1884 about 60 per cent of men could vote.Parl The Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885 then redrew constituency boundaries so that most areas returned a single MP.
What the Reform Acts did not settle
The nineteenth-century Reform Acts widened the vote in steps, but stopped well short of a vote for every adult. The House of Commons Library, in its history of the parliamentary franchise, records that even after 1884 two in every five men still could not vote, and that no woman could vote in a general election at all.HoC Full adult suffrage, meaning a vote for almost every adult woman and man, came only in 1918 and 1928, after further Acts of Parliament. The topics on the history of UK democracy and on Magna Carta set these Reform Acts in the longer story of how the vote spread.