A potwalloper (sometimes potwalloner or potwaller) is an archaic term referring to a borough constituency returning members to the House of Commons of England before 1707, the House of Commons of Great Britain and the Irish House of Commons before 1801,[1] and the House of Commons of the United Kingdom until 1832, when the Reform Act created more uniform forms of suffrage.
A potwalloper borough was one in which a householder had the right to vote if he had in his house, a hearth large enough to boil, or wallop, a cauldron, or pot.
The potwalloper was one of the widest variants of the borough franchise, and the tendency over the centuries was for the franchise to be limited, reducing the number of electors.
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From the time of the Restoration, the only English boroughs to elect on a potwalloper or inhabitant franchise were:
There were eleven such boroughs in Ireland until the Union with Great Britain in 1801. Ireland also had seven "manor boroughs", in which only freeholders voted.[1] The potwallopers included Lisburn, Antrim, Swords and Downpatrick, and before Emancipation only non-Roman Catholics could vote.[2]
The term 'potwalloper' was also used to refer to a trustee prisoner who made sure cell-buckets (for overnight use as latrines) were emptied and cleaned each morning. He did not do the cleaning himself, but he was responsible for making sure that other prisoners did.
When Thomas Babington McAuley complained about the insufficiencies of the suffrage system in the early 19th century, he wrote :
« This is an aristocracy, the principle of which is to invest a hundred drunken potwallopers in one place, or the owner of a ruined hovel in another with powers which are withheld from cities renowned in the furthest ends of the earth. »