Walthamstow by-election, 1897
|
||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
The Walthamstow by-election, 1897 was a parliamentary by-election held in England on 3 February 1897 for the House of Commons constituency of Walthamstow. The area was then a division of Essex, and is now part of Greater London.
The election was won by the Liberal-Labour candidate, after the seat had been held by the Conservative Party for 11 years.
The seat became vacant when Walthamstow's Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Edmund Byrne QC was appointed as a judge of the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice. This appointment disqualified him from sitting in parliament, triggering a by-election in Walthamstow.
The first Walthamstow constituency election in 1885 was won by the Liberals. In 1886 the seat was gained by the Conservatives and remained in their hands to 1897. Byrne had held the seat since the 1892 general election. The result at the previous general election waqs a comfortable victory for the Conservatives;
Byrne's appointment was reported in The Times newspaper on 15 January, and on the same day the paper reported that the Scotch whisky magnate Thomas Dewar had "kept himself in touch with the constituency" and might put his name forward as a possible Conservative candidate. The Walthamstow Central Liberal and Radical Association were initially undecided as to whether to contest the election, but were reported to be considering Arthur Pollen, who had been their candidate at the last general election, in 1895.
...
Wikipedia