Vote for Whitmore

• READ THIS!! THE CRISIS
• Election poster for fly-posting
• 254 x 381mm (10 x 15in)
• Circa 1886
•  

One of the characteristic features of Britain’s election campaigns in the Victorian era were the posters and broadsides produced by local printers. Pasted on walls in public places and distributed free in town squares, markets and taverns these ephemeral artifacts document the language and viewpoints of the period in which they were published.

Often containing scandalous and malicious claims, satirical verses and parodies or down right lies the political poster became one of the most important tools of persuasion. Perhaps this broadside, notably plain-spoken and somewhat wordy, is an attack on John Bright and William Gladstone during the Irish Home Rule crisis of 1886-89.

Charles Algernon Whitmore (1851 - 1908) represented Chelsea as a Conservative in the House of Commons for twenty years from 1886 to 1906; he died suddenly after a short illness at his residence in Lower Slaughter Manor, near Cheltenham, September 1908.