These lists were compiled by Mr Keith Murphy and although carefully prepared, errors may exist, in case of doubt, please refer to the original records.
During 1916-1917, the House of Commons Speaker, James William Lowther, chaired a conference on electoral reform which recommended limited women's suffrage.
Influential consideration
Only 58% of the adult male population was eligible to vote before 1918. An influential consideration, in addition to the suffrage movement and the growth of the Labour Party, was the fact that only men who had been resident in the country for 12 months prior to a general election were entitled to vote.
This effectively disenfranchised a large number of troops who had been serving overseas in the war. With a general election imminent, politicians were persuaded to extend the vote to all men and some women at long last.
Representation of the People Act 1918
In 1918 the Representation of the People Act was passed which allowed women over the age of 30 to vote, 8.5 million women met this criteria, it was only about two-thirds of the total population of women in the UK.
The same Act abolished property and other restrictions for men, and extended the vote to virtually all men over the age of 21. Additionally, men in the armed forces could vote from the age of 19. The electorate increased from eight to 21 million, but there was still huge inequality between women and men.
Equal Franchise Act 1928
It was not until the Equal Franchise Act of 1928 that women over 21 were able to vote and women finally achieved the same voting rights as men. This act increased the number of women eligible to vote to 15 million.
No electoral registers published in the years 1916 and 1917, but the important 1918 Act, recognising the part that men and women had played in the First World War, abolished the property qualifications and gave the vote to men at 21 and women at 30, that right being dependent on six months' residence or occupation of business premises worth £10 a year. The women had to be householders or the wives of householders or to have been to university. Men with qualifications in more than one constituency had, since 1832, been able to vote in each, but in 1918 this right was limited to two constituencies: that of their place of residence or business and/or that in which they had graduated.
From 15 October 1918 to 1926 the electoral registers were compiled twice a year. Those absent in the armed forces when the 1918 and subsequent lists were compiled are shown separately at the end of the polling district in which they normally lived in an Absent Voters' List. They could vote either by post or proxy. The entries show their home address, unit, rank and number, and form an important source of that information. Conscientious objectors were deprived of the vote from 1918 to 1923.
The 1918 Act resulted in a three-fold increase in the numbers qualified to vote. The main qualification being age, the rights of freemen and liverymen to vote at parliamentary elections in the boroughs were now finally abolished.