1881 Preston by-election

The 1881 Preston by-election took place on 20 May 1881 after the death of the incumbent Conservative MP Edward Hermon. The Conservative candidate William Farrer Ecroyd campaigned on a fair trade platform and won the seat. ^[1]

Preston by-election, 1881 ^[2]

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Conservative	William Farrer Ecroyd	6,004	58.0	−10.9
	Liberal	Henry Yates Thompson	4,340	42.0	+10.9
Majority			1,664	16.0	+14.3
Turnout			10,344	88.0	−7.8 (est)
Registered electors			11,748
	Conservative hold		Swing	-10.9

Notes

1. A. C. Howe, ‘Ecroyd, William Farrer (1827–1915)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008, accessed 16 Jan 2014.
2. "Political". The Cornishman. No. 150. 26 May 1881. p. 6.

Further reading

• B. H. Brown, The Tariff Reform Movement in Great Britain, 1881–1895 (1943).
• S. Zebel, ‘Fair Trade: An English Reaction to the Breakdown of the Cobden Treaty System’, Journal of Modern History, 12 (1940), pp. 161–185.