150 YEARS OF ELECTORAL REFORM
development in the United Kingdom.
An Election Bill arrived in the Keys in 1880 proposing to give the vote to every male person of full age who was not subject to any legal incapacity, by removing the most onerous property owning qualifications. With the involvement of some reform- minded Members of the House of Keys and the Manchester National Society for Women’s Suffrage, there soon followed a series of well-attended meetings to publicise ‘Votes for Women’. On 3 November 1880, as the Keys prepared to consider the Bill, the Mona’s Herald published an editorial calling for the enfranchisement of women, the
Below: At the General Election to the House of Keys in 1881, a Poll Book was completed in each parish. It records each voter’s name and the candidates for whom he or she voted. Image credit: Paul Dougherty, Tynwald Seneschal
chief argument advanced being that there should be no taxation without representation. On 5 November 1880 the Election Bill went before the Keys but still with the words ‘male persons’ in the text. In committee of the House, following comments by the Speaker, Sir John Stenhouse Goldie-Taubman, Mr Richard Sherwood MHK moved the crucial amendment which simply struck out the word ‘male’, thereby entitling females to vote. The amendment was overwhelmingly carried by 16 votes to 3.
This was not the end of the matter, for the Keys, despite being a popularly elected chamber, did not yet have primacy over the other branch of Tynwald, the Legislative Council. A spirited contest between the branches ensued.
On 14 December 1880 the Legislative Council rejected the Bill, its Members professing to worry about the difficulty of
securing Royal Assent to so radical a piece of legislation. As a compromise the House of Keys prevailed upon the Legislative Council to consent to the enfranchisement only of unmarried women and widows who owned property. Royal Assent was duly given and as a result 700 women received the vote for the first time, comprising about 10% of the Manx electorate.
At the first election under the new regime 460 women turned out to cast their vote, representing a turnout of around 66%. In the 1880s polling took place in different constituencies on different days. The precise time of opening of polling stations was not recorded but the identity of each voter was noted sequentially in a Poll Book. The election began on 22 March 1881 when voting took place in Ayre, in the north of the Island. At three polling stations, women’s names were the first to be recorded in the Poll
Book. We can conclude that the first woman to cast a vote in an election to a national parliament was Miss Eliza Jane Goldsmith of Ramsey, who voted at Lezayre; or Mrs Catherine Callow of Ballakilley, who voted at Bride; or Miss Esther Kee of Leodest, who voted at Andreas.8
In 1892 the franchise was extended to women tenants of property and in 1919 to all adult men and women who had lived in the Island for the whole of the preceding 12 months. Also in 1919 the House of Keys took an important step towards legislative primacy over the other branch of Tynwald when it became entitled for the first time to elect Members to the Legislative Council.
The reform of the Legislative Council continued in the 1960s and 1970s leading to today’s system where, apart from the Bishop, all the voting members of the Legislative Council are ‘hired and fired’ by the House of Keys. On that basis and taking
158 | The Parliamentarian | 2015: Issue Three
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