29/06/2024
NEW ROSS VOTERS NEARLY BROWNED OFF
In the recent local and European elections overall voter turnout did not exceed 50% in the locality.
Take a look back to the 1830's when New Ross had a population of over 6000 and yet only 130 were eligible to vote.
"New Ross was one of ten Irish boroughs with under 300 electors which Dominick Browne unsuccessfully proposed for disfranchisement, 9 July 1832.
The boundary commissioners felt ‘obliged to include’ the northern suburb of Irish Town with the borough, but were unable to ‘go beyond the burial ground, because the houses there cease to be contiguous’, while Modellin beyond it was ‘a separate village’.
Instead they recommended adding Rossbercon on the opposite side of the Barrow in county Kilkenny, which was ‘connected with New Ross by means of a wooden bridge’, explaining that although it would ‘not add above 10 or 12’ voters, ‘being on the bank of the river it may very possibly increase’.
They estimated that the reformed constituency would have 246 £10 householders (exclusive of Rossbercon) and eight resident burgesses who were not also qualified as householders, but in the event the 1832 registered electorate numbered only 130. There was no contest at that year’s general election, when John Hyacinth Talbot of Castle Talbot, county Wexford, in whose family the influence was now ‘chiefly vested’, was returned as a Liberal; but in 1835 Tottenham’s son mounted an unsuccessful challenge as a Conservative. He regained the seat in 1856 and retired in favour of his son Charles George Tottenham, also a Conservative, in 1863.
Author: Philip Salmon
SOURCE: History of Parliament
