1885 United Kingdom general election
The 1885 United Kingdom general election was held from 24 November to 18 December 1885. This was the first general election after an extension of the franchise and redistribution of seats. For the first time a majority of adult males could vote and most constituencies by law returned a single member to Parliament, fulfilling one of the ideals of Chartism to provide direct single-member, single-electorate accountability. It saw the Liberals, led by William Gladstone, win the most seats, but not an overall majority. As the Irish Nationalists held the balance of power between them and the Conservatives who sat with an increasing number of allied Unionist MPs, this exacerbated divisions within the Liberals over Irish Home Rule and led to a Liberal split and another general election the following year.
Image: William Ewart Gladstone, 1892 (cropped)
Image: Robert Gascoyne Cecil 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (cropped)
Image: Charles Stewart Parnell Brady Handy
Representation of the People Act 1884
In the United Kingdom under the premiership of William Gladstone, the Representation of the People Act 1884, also known informally as the Third Reform Act, and the Redistribution Act of the following year were laws which further extended the suffrage in the UK after the Derby government's Reform Act 1867. Taken together, these measures extended the same voting qualifications as existed in the towns to the countryside, more than doubling the electorate in the counties, and essentially established the modern one member constituency as the normal pattern for parliamentary representation.
William Ewart Gladstone in 1884.