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A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term borough designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely.
The Representation of the People Act 1832 was an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that introduced major changes to the electoral system of England and Wales. It reapportioned constituencies to address the unequal distribution of seats and expanded franchise by broadening and standardising the property qualifications to vote. Only qualifying men were able to vote; the Act introduced the first explicit statutory bar to women voting by defining a voter as a male person.
A municipal borough was a type of local government district which existed in England and Wales between 1836 and 1974, in Northern Ireland from 1840 to 1973 and in the Republic of Ireland from 1840 to 2002. Broadly similar structures existed in Scotland from 1833 to 1975 with the reform of royal burghs and creation of police burghs.
Birmingham, a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England, is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom.
The Municipal Corporations Act 1835, sometimes known as the Municipal Reform Act, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in the incorporated boroughs of England and Wales. The legislation was part of the reform programme of the Whigs and followed the Reform Act 1832, which had abolished most of the rotten boroughs for parliamentary purposes.
A municipal corporation is the legal term for a local governing body, including cities, counties, towns, townships, charter townships, villages, and boroughs. The term can also be used to describe municipally owned corporations.
The Municipal Corporations Act (Ireland) 1840, An Act for the Regulation of Municipal Corporations in Ireland, was passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom on 10 August 1840. It was one of the Municipal Corporations (Ireland) Acts 1840 to 1888.
Unreformed boroughs were those corporate towns in England and Wales which had not been reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. A handful of these obtained new charters under the 1835 Act. A royal commission was established in 1876 to inquire into these boroughs, and legislation passed in 1883 finally forced the reform or dissolution of these corporations by 1886.
The Municipal Corporations Act 1882 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It replaced existing legislation governing municipal boroughs in England and Wales, and gave the corporations powers to make bylaws and to acquire land and buildings. Municipal boroughs continued to be regulated by the Act until their abolition in 1974. Parts of the Act are still in operation. Sections 190 to 194 were amongst the enactments cited as the Police Acts 1839 to 1893.
The following is a list of towns in England and Wales which were granted charters of incorporation conferring borough status under the Municipal Corporations Act 1882 or the Local Government Act 1933.
The County Borough of Leeds, and its predecessor, the Municipal Borough of Leeds, was a local government district in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, from 1835 to 1974. Its origin was the ancient borough of Leeds, which was reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. In 1889, when West Riding County Council was formed, Leeds became a county borough outside the administrative county of the West Riding; and in 1893 the borough gained city status. The borough was extended a number of times, expanding from 21,593 acres (8,738 ha) in 1911 to 40,612 acres (16,435 ha) in 1961; adding in stages the former area of Roundhay, Seacroft, Shadwell and Middleton parishes and gaining other parts of adjacent districts. In 1971 Leeds was the fifth largest county borough by population in England. The county borough was abolished in 1974 and replaced with the larger City of Leeds, a metropolitan district of West Yorkshire.
Borough status is granted by royal charter to local government districts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The status is purely honorary, and does not give any additional powers to the council or inhabitants of the district. In Scotland, similarly chartered communities were known as royal burghs, although the status is no longer granted.
The UK parliamentary constituency of Seaford was a Cinque Port constituency, similar to a parliamentary borough, in Seaford, East Sussex. A rotten borough, prone by size to undue influence by a patron, it was disenfranchised in the Reform Act of 1832. It was notable for having returned three Prime Ministers as its members – Henry Pelham, who represented the town from 1717 to 1722, William Pitt the Elder from 1747 to 1754 and George Canning in 1827 – though only Canning was Prime Minister while representing Seaford.
The history of local government in England is one of gradual change and evolution since the Middle Ages. England has never possessed a formal written constitution, with the result that modern administration is based on precedent, and is derived from administrative powers granted to older systems, such as that of the shires.
Brighton was a parliamentary constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1832 until it was divided into single-member seats from the 1950 United Kingdom general election. Covering the seaside towns of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, it elected two Members of Parliament (MP) by the block vote system of election.
Philip Henry Muntz was a British businessman and Liberal politician. He was a leading figure in the politics of the rapidly growing industrial town of Birmingham in the mid-nineteenth century.
Ipswich Corporation was the local authority which ran the town of Ipswich in Suffolk, England. It was founded in 1200 and abolished in 1974, being replaced by Ipswich Borough Council. The corporation's formal name until 1835 was the "bailiffs, burgesses and commonalty of the town or borough of Ipswich", and after 1836 was the "mayor, aldermen and burgesses of the borough of Ipswich", but it was generally known as the corporation or town council.
William Scholefield was a British businessman and Liberal politician. He was a leading figure in the politics of the rapidly growing industrial town of Birmingham in the mid-nineteenth century, serving as the first mayor in 1838–39, and one of the constituency's two Members of Parliament from 1847 to 1867.
Buckingham was an ancient borough in England centred on the town of Buckingham in the county of Buckinghamshire, and was first recorded in the 10th century. It was incorporated as a borough in 1553/4 and reformed under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. In 1974, it was abolished as part of local government re-organisation under the Local Government Act 1972, and absorbed by Aylesbury Vale District Council.
Liverpool Town Council existed from 1835 to 1880.
References
- ↑ "A Vision of Britain through Time". GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth. Retrieved 2014-10-23.
- ↑ Petition submitted to the Privy Council on 28 January 1837 "No. 19462". The London Gazette . 31 January 1837. pp. 221–222.
- ↑ Charter granted 20 October 1837 "Incorporation of Devonport". Morning Post . 25 October 1837.
- ↑ Local Authority Records Archived May 29, 2008, at the Wayback Machine . Bolton Museums and Archive Service. URL accessed 12 July 2008.
- ↑ "A brief history of the Birmingham City Council". Birmingham Community Safety Partnership. 2008. Archived from the original on 2008-08-19. Retrieved 2008-07-09.
- ↑ "Manchester Quarter Sessions Records". Access to Archives. The National Archives. Retrieved 2008-07-09.
- ↑ "History of the Lord Mayor". Sheffield City Council. Archived from the original on 2011-06-12. Retrieved 2008-07-09.
- ↑ "Townships: Salford". A History of the County of Lancaster, Vol.4. British History Online. 1911. Retrieved 2008-07-09.
- ↑ The Municipal corporations act was applied to the borough by the Hedon Corporation and Borough Improvement Act 1860 (23 & 24 Vict c.xxxi). The first elections to the reformed borough were held on 1 November 1860. "Municipal Elections". Hull Packet & East Riding Times. 2 November 1860.
- ↑ "Conway: Its charter and corporation". North Wales Chronicle. Bangor. 17 March 1877. p. 4. Retrieved 9 November 2022.