St George's (UK Parliament constituency)

UK former constituency infobox
Name = St George's
Type = Borough
Year = 1885
Abolition = 1918
members = one

St George's was a parliamentary constituency in what is now the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It was part of the Parliamentary borough of Tower Hamlets and returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

History

Before 1885 the area was part of the Tower Hamlets constituency.

The constituency was created by the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 for the 1885 general election. It was often known as "St George's in the East" to distinguish it from the similarly named constituency in the West End.

This was an area on the north bank of the River Thames, with a lot of its inhabitants employed as dock workers or in the sugar refining industry. Pelling comments that it had the largest proportion of immigrant Irishmen in the metropolis.

The constituency was marginal between the Conservative and Liberal parties. Pelling suggests the Conservative MP, elected in 1885, owed his victory to generosity "bordering on corruption". Political issues important in the area were protectionism (as sugar refining was damaged by foreign subsidies to rivals) and the immigration of "pauper aliens" (the neighbouring division of Whitechapel had a large population of immigrant Jews).

The seat was abolished for the 1918 general election. The area was incorporated in a new seat of Whitechapel and St George's.

Boundaries

In 1885 the area was administered as part of the county of Middlesex. It was located in the Tower division, in the east of the historic county. The neighbourhood of St George in the East formed a division of the parliamentary borough of Tower Hamlets. The parliamentary division was part of the East End of London.

In 1889 the Tower division of Middlesex was severed from the county, for administrative purposes. It became part of the County of London. In 1900 the lower tier of local government in London was re-modelled. St George's constituency became part of the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney.

Members of Parliament

Election results

References

* "Boundaries of Parliamentary Constituencies 1885-1972", compiled and edited by F.W.S. Craig (Parliamentary Reference Publications 1972)
* "British Parliamentary Election Results 1885-1918", compiled and edited by F.W.S. Craig (The Macmillan Press 1974)
* "Social Geography of British Elections 1885-1910", by Henry Pelling (Macmillan 1967)
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