Either way, we know that as a young man, William had an interest in universal male suffrage. He left England to make a better life for himself and his family, and while he may not have envisaged that in New Zealand the British class system would break down, by the end of his life he knew that it had. He left England as a poor working class tradesman, but by the time he died, he was a successful businessman, well-known early settler, and had been an elected representative on the Blenheim Borough Council.
His first opportunity to cast a vote in a democratic election was been Wellington’s first municipal election in 1842. He would have known from soon after he arrived that a Municipal Corporation Bill had been presented to the Governor, and that the intention was for a universal male franchise. William doesn’t actually appear on the register of electors for 1842, and I’ve always assumed that the registration fee of 20 shillings was the reason why. Twenty shillings was the best part of a week’s wages for a labouring man, and it’s very likely that the Norgroves just didn’t have the money to spare. I’ve imagined William being excited by the sudden opportunity for democratic participation, and then frustrated by the lack of funds to achieve it. I’ve even imagined William and Sarah arguing, him wanting to spend the money and her arguing for paying the rent and buying food and furniture.
What I didn’t imagine was that when William had his first opportunity to read the details of the bill, his dreams of voting would have run into a brick wall. In late January 1842 a summary and extracts of the bill were published in the local newspaper. A few paragraphs in, the details of the franchise were described :
Every male inhabitant of full age, not convicted of felony, bribery or perjury, may claim to be enrolled a burgess on payment of 20s, although he may possess no rateable property within the Borough.The brick wall? William was a convicted felon.
Roll back to December 1832. The Reform Act had been passed, and while most of the so-called “rotten boroughs” had been disposed of, and the number of eligible voters had increased, the requirement for property worth £10 still ruled out the bulk of the working class from voting. The protests which had led to the Reform Act continued throughout Britain into December 1832 when the general election took place.
There was evidently a custom in Colchester at the end of elections for members of the public to pull down the hustings and polling booths to take away the materials they were made of, presumably to use or to sell for cash. The local authorities had attempted to prevent this from happening by putting around notices advising that the buildings were the property of the builders, and not to be taken.
On the evening of 12 December, nineteen-year-old William Norgrove was amongst a mob of around 100 people who had assembled around the hustings. Police constables waited nearby in anticipation of trouble. A man by the name of John Grove got the ball rolling, encouraging the mob to take their customary perquisite by pulling down the hustings. The mob respond with some enthusiasm and violence. Rocks were thrown. William apparently hurled a rock which hit two constables. Then, according to an eyewitness, he started pulling down the hustings, while calling out, “Now then, we’ll have a go!”
Nine men, including William, were arrested and appeared before the local justices on 17 December charged with inciting the populace to riot and tumult, and with having demolished one of the polling booths. Three of the men were discharged without conviction; the remaining six, William included, were remanded to stand trial at the next session of the Assizes. They were given leave to apply for bail; all but two were able to afford this, but two remained in jail until the Lent Assizes session in March 1833. These two aren’t named so I have no idea if William was one of them.
At the Lent Assizes, William and the other five men were indicted for riotous assembly and the assault of three constables in the execution of their duty. The prosecutor was determined to prove that John Grove was the ring-leader, but noted that there were differing degrees of “criminality” among the other defendants. A number of witnesses were called, including constable George Gusterson, who said :
I was employed to protect the hustings on the above occasion; large stones were thrown by the mob at the hustings and the constables, one of which, thrown by Norgrove, first struck Hills and then Finch; Norgrove was particularly active in inciting the mob to break down the hustings; the inhabitants were much alarmed by the riot and closed down their shops.Grove’s lawyer argued that Grove hadn’t even been there, and produced a number of witnesses who said he had been in the pub at the time. He then tried to muddy the waters by claiming it was all the city corporation’s fault for putting around the notices telling people they couldn’t take the materials from the hustings. The judge took a remarkably lenient view, found the lot of them guilty, fined Grove £30 and the rest of them one shilling each.
They were lucky they got off lightly – if the Riot Act had been read at the time of the riot, they could have all been hanged or transported to Australia.
So back to William in Wellington in 1842, reading about the proposed municipal corporation bill and realising with something of a sinking feeling that he had rendered himself ineligible to vote by his youthful behaviour. It raises some questions, not least of which is whether he had ever told Sarah about this less than stellar moment in his past? If he had, was that before, or after they were married? And if he hadn’t, had the moment for confession arrived? I’ll never know for sure, although I rather suspect that he might have told her at some point after they were married, possibly characterising it as part of a political protest.
In the end, it did not matter. William paid his 20s and appeared on the burgess roll of 1843 – when the Municipal Corporation Act was eventually passed in 1842, it did not explicitly disenfranchise the felons, bribery artists and perjurers of the borough. And, as it turned out, the 1843 election didn’t take place. The first election in which William actually voted would have been the first general parliamentary election in 1853. (Felons were disqualified from registering to vote only if their felony had been committed “within any part of her Majesty’s dominions”. Felons who had committed their crimes anywhere else in the world, including Britain, were presumably free to vote…)
